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THE WORLD'S EPOCH-MAKERS 



EDITED BY 

OLIPHANT SMEATON 



Hegel and Hegelianism 

By R. Mackintosh, D.D. 



Previous Volumes in this Series : — 

CRANMER AND THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. 
By A. D. Innes, M.A. 

WESLEY AND METHODISM. 

By F. J. Snell, M.A. 

LUTHER AND THE GERMAN REFORMATION. 
By Principal T. M. Lindsay, D.D. 

BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM. 

By Arthur Lillie. 
WILLIAM HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK. 

By James Sime, M.A., F.R.S.E. 
FRANCIS AND DOMINIC. 

By Prof. J. Herkless, D.D. 
SAVONAROLA. 

By Rev. G. M 'Hardy, D.D. 
ANSELM AND HIS WORK. 

By Rev. A. C. Welch, M.A., B.D. 
MUHAMMAD AND HIS POWER. 

By P. De Lacy Johnstone, M.A.(Oxon.) 
ORIGEN AND GREEK PATRISTIC THEOLOGY. 

By Rev. William Fairweather, M.A. 
THE MEDICI AND THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE. 

By Oliphant Smeaton, M.A. 

j PLATO. 

By Prof. D. G. Ritchie, M. A., LL.D. 

PASCAL AND THE PORT ROYALISTS. 

By William Clark, LL.D., D.C.L. 
EUCLID: HIS LIFE AND SYSTEM. 

By Thomas Smith, D.D., LL.D. 



THE WORLD'S EPOCH-MAKERS 



Hegel and 



Hegelianism 



By 

R. Mackintosh, D.D. 

Professor of Apologetics in Lancashire Independent College 
Manchester 

AUTHOR OF "FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD " 



New York. Charles Scribner's Sons 

1903 






/ion 

^3 



PREFACE 



To write shortly upon Hegelianism has proved even 
more extraordinarily difficult in accomplishment than 
it seemed in prospect ; and much that had been set 
down for discussion, especially towards the end, has 
been crowded out. It was necessary for this series and 
for this writer to discuss Hegel from a point of view 
accessible to all who are interested in "the world's 
epoch-makers " ; yet in breaking off the author feels 
with regret that many a matter has been left un- 
explained which must prove a stone of stumbling to 
the beginner. Within this little book such a reader 
may find some measure of help from the Index. He 
may further be recommended to study the notes upon 
Hegel's phraseology at the end of the prolegomena 
to Dr. Wallace's translation of the Logic. Among 
many other serviceable books, Dr. E. Caird's short 
volume, Hegel — by a master in philosophy and 
especially in Hegelianism — stands pre-eminent. Half 
of it is biographical. The other half confines itself to 
stating and enforcing, with much sympathy, Hegel's 



vi PREFACE 

central point of view. For that among other reasons 
it seemed best that the present handbook should 
attempt an outline of the various portions of the 
system. The Chicago handbooks edited by Dr. Morris 
will be found of great service in pursuing further 
study of Hegel's detail. But no magic can make 
Hegel an easy author ; and no helps, however efficient, 
ought to be used as substitutes for personal knowledge 
of the master mind. 1 

1 In the literature at the head of several chapters, it will be observed 
that (A) stands for translations ; (B) for untranslated and relevant 
portions of Hegel's writings ; (C) for helpful works in English on the 
subjects under discussion, or works influenced strongly by Hegel. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 
PREFACE V 

PART I. 

General and Historical, 
chap. 
I. introductory 1 

' II. PRELIMINARY OUTLINE 7 

III. REMOTER ANTECEDENTS — PLATO, ARISTOTLE, SPINOZA . 31 

IV. PROXIMATE ANTECEDENTS — KANT, ETC 42 

V. HEGEL'S LIFE AND WRITINGS 65 

VI. BRITISH HEGELIANISM— EARLIER PHASES .... 85 
VII. BRITISH HEGELIANISM— LATER PHASES . . . .105 

PART II. 

Detailed and Critical. 



VIII. THE HEGELIAN LOGIC 

Contents of Hegel's Lesser Logic 

IX. THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE . . . 

Brief Note on Contents of Philosophy of Nature 

X. TRANSITION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRIT 

Outline Contents of Philosojihy of Mind . 



127 

148 

150 
174 

175 
181 



Vlll 



CONTENTS 



CHAP. 
XI. HEGELIANISM AND PSYCHOLOGY . 

Note A. On the Phenomenology of Spirit 
Outline Contents of the Phenomenology . 



XII. HEGELIANISM AND ETHICS .... 

Outline Contents (of Philosophy of Right) 



XIII. HEGELIANISM AND ESTHETICS . 

Note : Hegel's "Division of the Subject " 

XIV. HEGELIANISM AND HISTORY 

Note : Hegel's Historical Groupings 

XV. HEGELIANISM AND CHRISTIANITY 

Abridged Contents of Philosophy of Religion 

XVI. FINAL STATEMENT AND ESTIMATE 



PAGE 

. 183 

. 195 

. 201 

. 203 

. 217 

. 218 

. 233 

. 235 

. 252 

. 254 

254, 273 

. 275 



293 



HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 



CHAPTER I 

Introductory 

Philosophy is often described as a doctrine of the 
Absolute. It is not indeed specially characteristic of 
Hegel to use such a definition. He prefers to speak 
of the Idea. For Hegel is upon his own showing an 
idealist, and an absolute idealist. When we have dealt 
with his system in detail, particularly with what he calls 
Logic, we shall find ourselves, or ought to find ourselves, 
better able to appreciate the motives of his terminology. 
Still, the difference in words does not imply a difference 
in subject or topic. Like other philosophies, Hegel's 
might also be called a doctrine of the Absolute. He 
ends his expositions in the region of " absolute know- 
ledge " or " the absolute idea." 

This sounds somewhat abstract and aloof from every- 
day life. It may be said at the outset that Hegel's 
philosophy less than any other stands aloof from reality 
or aspires to a construction in vacuo. We may very 
possibly blame him for being unduly entangled in the 
realities of ordinary experience ; we cannot fairly charge 



2 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

him with disparaging them. And if we are allowed to 
translate the word Absolute by a less pretentious equi- 
valent, we may be helped to repel the unfair suspicions 
spoken of. The doctrine of the Absolute is a doctrine 
of reality. Whatever is real — in or below the half- 
deceptive appearances of things — through or behind 
the "phenomena" of ordinary experience or of the 
physical universe — that is the object of the philosopher's 
quest. 

He is not the only teacher of mankind who seeks 
reality. Every teacher who deserves respect has the 
same high ambition somehow ruling in him. Yet in 
certain respects the philosopher stands alone. He is 
pledged to thoroughness, and tries to push inquiry 
further than it is carried by others, e.g. by the physical 
sciences. Properly, of course, the word " science " simply 
means knowledge; it is by a conventional use of 
language that we restrict the word, as we ordinarily do, 
to specialised knowledge in a single department. When 
Hegel uses the German word for science — Wissenschaft 
— there is no corresponding restriction. And is not 
Hegel justified ? If partial knowledge ought to be 
studied, is there not room for one who shall cultivate 
knowledge as a whole ? Knowledge as a whole, or 
reality as a whole — we may use either form of words 
without change of meaning ; or are we prepared to fall 
back upon the despised groping of the Platonic dia- 
logues, and suppose that one kind of knowledge deals 
not with reality but with the unreal ? It is more 
fashionable nowadays to suppose that a reality exists 
with which knowledge cannot enter into any relation. 
Whether this is wiser than the other onesidedness may 
be questioned. Hegel will vigorously deny its wisdom. 



INTRODUCTORY 3 

The philosopher, then, studying knowledge or reality as 
a whole, will inquire whether there are assumptions 
made by the special sciences — what these are — within 
what limits they hold good. This is no part of the 
work of special science. So long as in practice it 
respects its proper limits — and it usually though not 
always succeeds in doing that — a special science may 
live and do good service without ever being distinctly 
conscious of the qualifications which ought to be under- 
stood when its results are stated. Knowledge is like a 
sum in arithmetic worked out to several points of deci- 
mals. The special science is a schoolboy who usually 
is content to get two or three decimal figures and then 
stop. If he is in an ambitious mood, however, he will 
work to twenty or thirty figures — going far beyond 
what his data warrant. Philosophy claims to be an 
expert, carrying the sum exactly as far as it ought to 
go, and knowing precisely why the calculation has to 
stop at a particular figure. 

It may still be doubted whether we shall gain any- 
thing by discussing the absolute reality in abstract 
terms. Are there not many kinds of reality which 
have nothing to do with each other ? Here we notice 
another of the peculiarities of Hegel. He is a monist. 
He does not believe in different kinds of reality, so 
distinct that we cannot bring them together. Being 
an idealist, he affirms that the nature of thought or of 
knowledge gives us our most reliable clue to the nature 
of reality ; and his friends may further argue that two 
wholly distinct realities, if they came to be known, 
would rend the unity of consciousness. For good or 
for evil, Hegel defines reality (and thought) in the 
abstract. And the conceptions of the Real which he 



4 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

builds up in his Logic he carries with hirn when he 
proposes to expound special aspects of the known 
Reality, as in nature, or as in ^Esthetics or Ethics 
or Religion. Dualism is repudiated and protested 
against; at the same time, duality — in subordination 
to unity, and as a means of manifesting or realising 
unity — is asserted everywhere. 

The great man who presented these thoughts on the 
boldest scale to the modern world — or indeed to any 
period of the world's history, ancient or modern — has 
little purely biographical interest attaching to his life 
and character. Even when he is caught up in the 
current of notable and tragic events — even when 
Napoleon wins a battle within sight of the philo- 
sopher's study and within earshot of his lecture-room — 
the thing: is accidental and external to him. Its effects 
cannot modify though they may perplex or delay his 
true development. In the history of a thinker the 
landmarks are ideas; his boldest and most thrilling 
deeds are books or lectures. What is true of thinkers 
in contrast to men of action is pre-eminently true of 
Hegel among all the race of thinkers. He seeks to 
reduce reality not merely to the form of subjectivity as 
thought, but to the form of intellect as logical thought. 
Knowledge on his view grasps the Absolute ; nothing 
eludes knowledge. Goodness and beauty are existences 
to which the principles of knowledge or of thought 
afford a clue ; and the supreme interest of beauty and 
goodness is to afford help in the development of in- 
telligence. We believe, therefore, that we shall do most 
justice to our subject by dealing mainly with Hegelian- 
ism, mentioning as regards Hegel only what may afford 
a chronology of his works and make his position intel- 



INTRODUCTORY 5 

legible — so far as one can do this in a compend — when 
we compare him with his predecessors and with his 
principal British disciples. Even during his life his 
idiosyncrasy counted for little. Other men have swayed 
their time by the charm or the force of their per- 
sonality; Hegel's overmastering desire was to be an 
impersonal servant of the Idea — in more familiar 
language, a servant of [abstract] truth. It was indeed 
Hegel's belief that no one in effect achieves more or 
achieves less than what his thoughts entitle him to. 
Form on ultimate analysis appears to be part of the 
content; that favourite distinction melts, like all 
others, in the Hegelian laboratory. When the same 
thoughts are held to move society differently as in- 
terpreted by a different character, Hegel judges that 
they are not the same, but modified in exact proportion 
to the difference in their effects. An " edifying " philo- 
sophy was his pet aversion ; and we may safely say 
that no man ever handled such lofty themes in so con- 
sistently and coldly scientific a spirit. We never feel 
the beat of a heart in his writings — only the pulse of 
thought. A manual of the Differential Calculus will 
appear a warm and sentimental treatise when compared 
with the merciless pages in which Hegel anatomises 
the soul of man or the nature of the Blessed God. 
Nothing that he has said will, by the manner of his 
saying it, make any one the braver for reading it or the 
better for remembering it. The philosopher has almost 
if not altogether eaten out the man. Thus, if much of 
what we say seems to deal with philosophy rather than 
with Hegelianism or with Hegel, let us remember that 
Hegel is the philosopher par excellence — the man in- 
terested in truth, in all truth, in nothing but truth, or 



6 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

interested in other experiences simply as phases in the 
intellectual search for truth. Moreover, Hegelianism 
is certainly not yet a dead doctrine or a spent force. 
We are not building a cenotaph in honour of one great 
man. We are introducing the reader to a fortress of 
thought, now perhaps somewhat decayed, or at least 
reported to be so, but still inhabited by living men 
and hard fighters. 



CHAPTEE II 

Preliminary Outline 

What is stated here must be regarded as purely pro- 
visional. It does not follow the line of any of Hegel's 
own statements, and, if accepted, must be taken upon 
trust. It is an effort to express the leading thoughts of 
Hegel so as to make them, if not intelligible, yet some- 
what less unintelligible to the beginner. 

We shall treat his main positions as a progressively 
unfolded doctrine of the Absolute. Or, to use less 
alarming language, we shall regard them as progressive 
definitions of the nature of what is real. We throw to 
the front a belief which we regard as deeply character- 
istic of Hegel, namely, 

I. Reality is a system. We might approach the same 
thought by saying that reality is conceived as a unity 
— or that there is a unity divined in all existence. 
That is indeed a belief characteristic of Hegel, but it 
seems well from the very first to emphasise his opposi- 
tion to Pantheism of the ordinary type. Ordinary 
pantheists hold unity to be important and difference 
trivial; they regard unity as an objective fact, but 
difference as a mere human fiction. It is not so with 
Hegel. To him, existence is necessarily revealed not 
simply as a unity, but as a unity of distinguished and 



8 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

related parts — -in short, as a system. We may add that 
reality is interpreted as a system of the highest kind — 
an organism and more than an organism. The whole is 
believed to imply every part, and every part is believed 
to imply the whole. Or, again — more briefly, if less 
significantly — every part implies every other part. 

"Flower in the crannied wall, 
I pluck you out of the crannies, 
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
Little flower — but if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is." 

This is very far from our ordinary common-sense way 
of conceiving reality, and it may be asked how Hegel 
dares to make such an assumption. He is not greatly 
concerned to justify himself to the startled beginner. 
He lived in an age of proud idealist speculations, and 
was more interested in comparing his own type of 
philosophy with rival systems, than in laying bare to 
the plain man the approaches to wisdom. One answer 
indeed he offers, but a formidable one ; he tells us that 
the final justification of his system is to be found by 
working through it as a whole. If you will (and can) 
follow him, he will show you a place for everything, 
and everything in its place, and he will show you that 
each pigeonhole must be added in its turn to round off 
those which have gone before. And surely this answer 
is sufficient, if it be true ; but it is not available for a 
preliminary survey. In anticipation of fuller epitomes 
yet to be given, we may say that it is unquestionably 
from the nature of Thought Hegel derives his belief in 
the systematic character of the Keal. " To think," said 
Sir William Hamilton, " is to condition, to relate " — a 



PRELIMINARY OUTLINE 9 

description of thought which Hamilton seemed to re- 
gard as seriously damaging the pretensions of thought 
to represent reality. But why ? Why must we assume 
that reality is a contingent plurality rather than a 
systematic unity ? Above all, why should we do so 
when our own thought forces us in the opposite direc- 
tion ? Its relating activity, if finished, must give us a 
system of absolute and complete determination, such as 
Hegel affirms that we already can recognise in the 
nature of reality. If our minds necessarily evolve 
certain beliefs when engaged in their task of thinking 
— if, e.g., they compel us to regard reality as a system, 
or else to abandon cognition altogether — is not that 
a full proof of the validity of such belief ? Do not 
considerations like these establish the thesis with which 
we are dealing ? 

Even physical science drops hints of a similar bear- 
ing. Has not the spectroscope proved that in distant 
stars — where Mill thought it highly questionable 
whether two and two would not make five — the same 
chemical elements are at work which we know in 
our laboratories ? Thus already a posteriori science 
verifies the assumption of unity and reason even in 
the material cosmos. 

A favourite example with Hegel himself is that of 
the magnet. If we approach its study with mechanical 
prejudices in our minds, we shall assume that the 
magnet is due to composition, and we may propose 
to break it in two and divide it, one of us keeping 
the north pole and one the south. But the magnet, 
material as it is, refuses to be thus divided into con- 
stituent fragments. Each portion is a whole; each 
turns out to possess both a north pole and a south. 



io HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

The question between Hegel and his adversaries may 
be formulated thus — which is the truer type of the 
constitution of the real universe, a heap of stones or 
a magnet ? 1 Or — to go one step further — a heap of 
stones, or a living organism ? Or— again a step fur- 
ther — matter, or thought ? 

For it is not to be supposed that Hegel is mainly 
occupied with the material universe. His Encyclo- 
paedia is, or seems to be, divided into three regions — a 
world of thought (Logic) ; a world of reality, in some 
sense or other estranged from thought (Nature) ; and 
a world of reality consciously penetrated by thought 
(Spirit). That division, however, is characteristically 
hard and obscure, and a learner will be wise to post- 
pone his study of it until a later stage. It is more 
important now to understand in general terms that 
the system of reality to which Hegel points us is 
absolute and all-inclusive. God, if He exists, must 
be placed in it, or, better perhaps, must be revealed 
through it. To be aloof from it would be to fall out 
of reality altogether. Hegel might have adopted the 
phrase with which the Agnostic young lady once 
startled the author of The Epic of Hades — " There is 
nowhere else." Positively, this all-inclusive sweep of 
the system of reality implies that Hegel must find a 
place within it for the spiritual interests of mankind. 
Morality and religion must be parts of reality, no less 
than matter or force. This is the moving interest in 
the case of the more earnest minds who adhere to 

1 This is not the only nor the main reason why Hegel's "Notion'"' 
has sometimes been rendered "Polarity." The opposition (in unity) of 
pole and pole is a still more precious parable in the opinion of Hegel's 
disciples. 



PRELIMINARY OUTLINE n 

the Hegelian system— men like the late T. H. Green. 
They believe that, in defending the reality of ordinary 
knowledge, or the trustworthiness of thought, they 
are helping to fight the one great battle of belief 
against the spirit of denial. In the English-speaking 
world, we are accustomed to alliances between an 
Agnostic philosophy and a religious faith. It is im- 
portant to have the opposite view thrust even sharply 
on our notice. It is well to remind ourselves that 
there are capable thinkers who regard any such alli- 
ance as a piece of intellectual cowardice, or a covert 
treason. 

In the sense in which we have explained it, and as 
understood by Hegel, reality is not something aloof 
from thought, but (to say no more) includes in itself 
the great determinations or categories by which the 
human mind grasps its knowledge — these also are 
realities. Hence we may profitably regard Hegel's 
view of reality as an extension of Kant's view of 
thought. So far as Kant furnished a positive refuta- 
tion of Hume's positions, we may say that it consisted 
in one special point. Hume had practically affirmed 
that sequence was a reality, while causation was no- 
thing but a subjective fiction, the fruit of association. 
Kant showed — by a new mode of treatment involving a 
deeper analysis of subjectivity — that it was impossible 
to explain the consciousness of sequence without im- 
plying a consciousness (explicit or implicit) of that 
ideal bond of union between sequent phenomena which 
we know as the law of causation. Apart from that, 
Kant showed, human knowledge would be a rope of 
sand. A conscious series must be more than a series. 
It rests on a unity — subjectively, the unity of the 



12 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

conscious Self ; objectively, the unity of causal processes 
reciprocally determining each other. (Thus, be it 
noted, the unity, even according to Kant, develops into 
a sort of system.) Accordingly, human knowledge is 
revealed as a web of necessary relations. Sequence 
and necessary causal connexion, things which treated 
objectively seem to be totally different assertions, turn 
out to be nothing else than different sides of the same 
set of facts when we study them by the new methods 
of the Critical Philosophy. The natural result is that, 
if we believe in sequence, we must also believe in 
causation. In Kant this position is evacuated of mean- 
ing by the deeper and subtler agnosticism which he 
puts in the place of Hume's ; but Hegel bids us be in 
earnest with Kant's result. The difference between 
Kant's and Hegel's ideas of system appears further 
when we pass on to higher determinations of outward 
reality than mechanism. According to Kant, we can- 
not study organisms without conceiving them as 
unities moulded by [purpose, or] " final cause." Every 
plant or animal is an end to itself. It persists as a 
unity through changes — seeking its own continuance 
and the continuance of its species. It is some- 
thing quite different from a mechanical compound of 
parts. But Kant thinks we must bear in mind that 
we have not such support for our ideas of teleological 
nature as for our ideas of mechanism. 1 The mechanical 
sequence of natural phenomena is the alter ego of 
human self - consciousness ; teleological nature is an 

1 It is incomprehensible that Tennyson's "Flower in the crannied 
wall " should ever be found quoted in relation to Kant's limited world 
of mechanisms. Dr. E. Caird quotes it as we have done {Hegel, 
p. 180). 



PRELIMINARY OUTLINE 13 

unverified shadow of mind somehow projected into 
the world of mechanism. 

" God might have made the earth bring forth 
Enough for great and small, 
[The oak tree and the cedar tree,] 
Without a flower at all ! " 

It lies in the very nature of things that, if we are 
to be conscious of sequence, we must recognise causa- 
tion. It does not lie in the nature of things that, if we 
are ourselves to be conscious or self-conscious beings, 
we should discover organisms as well as mechanisms 
around us. They are, as Mr. Gladstone styled Parnell's 
contribution to the Kilmainham treaty, a hors d'ceuvre. 
They are a fifth wheel to nature's coach. In contrast 
with these views of Kant's, Hegel seeks (by methods 
which we shall presently indicate) to verify all the 
principal categories of human thought as being bound 
up with the simplest exercise of self-consciousness. 
Meantime let us notice some features of this idea of 
system. 

First, the idea, if it can be vindicated, offers the 
highest kind of verification for each particular thought. 
Empiricism rests every truth on the authority of some 
one fact of experience or some collection of such 
facts. Intuitionalism appeals to the sense of subjective 
necessity — strong for those in whom it exists — power- 
less to convince others, and attaching to hallucinations 
as strongly as to the axioms of mathematics or the 
elementary truths of morals. Idealism, on the contrary, 
appeals to the coherence of the whole. Every part 
supports every other part. If you think at all, you 
must accept whatever is shown to be involved in the 
connected system of the great thought of reality. 



14 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

Secondly, the idea is not overfavourable to belief in 
Free Will. The case is not perfectly clear. We shall 
argue hereafter that Hegel's thoughts leave room for 
Libertarianism ; but his British followers have gone 
strongly against it ; and we cannot deny that, in sup- 
port of their choice, they may plausibly appeal to this 
master thought or deep foundation of the Hegelian 
philosophy, the thought of a connected system. " 

Thirdly, the idea is favourable to optimism. All is 
of one piece, and " the whole is good," as the author of 
Gravenhurst used to insist. 1 It perplexes one to observe 
how effortless the optimism of a good Hegelian appears. 
He might say with an optimist of a very different 
school, Walt Whitman, " No array of terms can say how 
much I am at peace about God and about death." To 
the strength of his logic — his mere logic — tears and 
blood and sins are negligible quantities. 

Fourthly, the idea if strictly interpreted is fatal to 
the idea of Supernatural Revelation ; — there is nowhere 
else. We do not assert that it is fatal to belief in 
Divine personality. On that great question, as on 
many others, Hegel himself seems to be ambiguous, 
and his followers may plausibly claim support from 
him for opposite conclusions. But he is more plainly 
hostile to the idea of revelation or redemption. The 
idea of system, as he states it and works it out, seems 
to involve a colossal and remorseless naturalism (of 
reason, not of matter), which is totally incompatible 
with any form of the Christian Church's faith in Jesus 
Christ. Hegel himself perhaps veils this conclusion, 
at least for the most part; but we agree with his 
distinguished student, Dr. E. Caird, in holding that 
1 The phrase is at least as old as Rousseau. 



PRELIMINARY OUTLINE 15 

Hegel's principles in regard to religion involve con- 
clusions beyond those generally recognised, or — perhaps 
— generally contained, in his utterances. But to this 
point we return later. 

Having said so much, it may be well to add that 
the present writer regards this conception o£ system 
as the deepest, the most suggestive, and probably the 
most solid thing in Hegel. All metaphysics — i.e. all 
sustained thinking in its ultimate phases — brings us 
face to face with some such conception of reality. If 
there are limits to the possibility of maintaining or 
developing the thought in question, these are limits to 
human reason. Instead of asking whether such an 
affirmation be true to fact, we must rather ask, In 
what sense it is true ? or, under what limits ? 

II. Reality is a graded system. 

So far we have learned that, in the system of reality, 
as conceived by Hegel, all parts are justified. For all 
are needed ; they are all integral, organic. We must 
now add that all are not equally important. While 
they are alike justified, they are not perhaps justified 
in equal measure. They stand to each other in rela- 
tion of superiority and inferiority. In the Logic, 
this grouping refers to different thoughts; — though 
we must remember that, even in the Logic, the 
thoughts refer to reality ; they are definitions of the 
Real (constituting together somehow one great defini- 
tion). In the Philosophy of Nature and Philosophy 
of Spirit, the grouping refers explicitly to different 
phases of objective reality. In the two latter, the 
meaning seems — perhaps only from custom — more 
readily intelligible. It is the grouping of the Logic, 
however, which Professor Andrew Seth seems to have 



1 6 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

in view when he praises the grading of categories as 
Hegel's greatest achievement, Dr. Seth's able pupil, 
Dr. Mellone, concurring with him. Primarily, such 
grading seems to imply that the earlier definitions of 
reality vanish as false or inadequate, while the later 
ones — or possibly only the very latest of all — hold the 
field as adequate to the facts. Reality is not bare 
being in the abstract ; reality is " the Notion " or " the 
Idea " — i.e. reality is a grand coherent system of unity 
preserved in and fulfilled through differences. We are 
confirmed in supposing that Hegel takes this view, 
according to which lower " categories/' once seen to be 
lower, are done with, when we learn that the earlier 
categories are represented by their successors. Their 
life-blood passes into their conquerors ; they live on, 
transmuted into higher forms of life. Why then 
secure them a separate existence at all, even at an 
inferior grade ? Plainly, they may apply in a special 
sense to a part of the real. There may be a section or 
department of reality within which they are peculiarly 
appropriate. We find, accordingly, that in the world 
of our knowledge and experience, mechanism survives 
alongside of teleology, and the chemical substance 
alongside of the psychical or ideal subject. Part of 
Hegel's wisdom is to point out that we ought to 
apply mechanical or chemical categories to appropriate 
phenomena, while passing to higher categories for 
teleological or spiritual facts. Concurrently with this, 
however, we must keep in mind that, according to 
Hegel, not the smallest fragment of reality can be 
finally or fully explained except by the highest cate- 
gories (" Flower in the crannied wall "). If anything 
in the universe were mere mechanism or mere dead 



PRELIMINARY OUTLINE i; 

matter, Hegel would despair of God and of the 
spiritual life of man. The plain working category of 
the lower ranges of thought leads somewhere to con- 
tradiction; and the contradiction pushes us onwards 
and upwards. This grading of categories permits 
Hegel and Hegelians to treat much current opinion 
as " true in a sense," or " true from a certain point of 
view," but "in a deeper sense false." It provides 
further that we should arrange all catagories in a 
certain orderly sequence. We do not pass directly to 
the highest, when a lower form of thought reveals its 
limitations ; we try the next in order — the limitation 
detected is supposed to force us precisely into the next 
phase of thought. 

If coexistent parts of the system of reality are 
successive stages in our conception of the whole, still 
we must not think that this succession has primarily 
anything to do with time. When the philosophy of 
Spirit introduces us to the study of history, we find 
the categories taken up one after another at successive 
periods — partly in the history of mankind as a race, 
more clearly in the history of philosophies, or — the 
two statements have the same meaning for Hegel — of 
philosophy. In themselves, or in the Logic, thoughts 
cannot be temporally prior and posterior. As well in- 
quire whether the north pole of a magnet is cause of 
its south pole ! One thought ideally implies the other 
— makes room for it — passes into it — always ideally. 

A special source of perplexity is Hegel's habit of 
returning upon a lower category whenever he finds it 
convenient to do so. If the categories are successive 
definitions of the universe of reality, we expect that 
we shall be done with the lower category (at least as 



18 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

applied to the whole of things) when we reach the 
higher — the higher, which ex hypothesi includes in itself 
all that was true in the lower. But Hegel pays no 
respect to any such inference. His point of view is 
briefly defined in his writings (against Spinoza or 
equally against Schelling) as a belief that reality is 
"not [a] substance but [a] subject." Yet he astonishes 
his reader by treating reality again and again as 
"substance," even after the definition "subject" has 
been announced and argued for. It is as if he defined 
reality as " substance " qua real, natural, material, and 
as " subject " qua ideal. Instead of " not substance but 
subject," he seems to allow himself now to affirm "not 
only substance but also subject." He seems to perceive 
no distinction between these two formulas. This is a 
specimen of the extraordinary and licentious logical 
laxity which we find in Hegel side by side with much 
delicate and even hair-splitting work. What do we 
gain by arranging the categories in a fixed order (as 
definitions of the real whole) if they not merely survive 
in their children but walk as ghosts ? The precedence 
is not much more serious than that observed in walking 
out of a drawing-room at a dinner party. Some go 
sooner, others later; but all go to the same table. 
Successive phases in Hegel are co-ordinate aspects, and 
co-ordinate aspects are successive phases. He who 
supersedes another is before very long himself super- 
seded. Does the mere order in which the phases occur 
matter very much? Taking everything together — 
remembering that (1) the lower category does not fully 
explain even its own department, and that (2) the lower 
category may be called on when convenient to explain 
features in the highest department — one doubts whether 



PRELIMINARY OUTLINE 19 

Hegel's apparatus of grading is much better than 
sleight-of-hand. He may not have tricked us over it, 
but he has secured to himself every facility for doing 
so. Hegel imperils his profound conception of reality 
as a system when he seeks to justify it in this fashion. 
And yet we shall need some such grading — we may 
say, if we like, some such evolution ; but we must re- 
member that the Hegelian evolution is not an evolution 
in time. 

Hegel shows us therefore different thoughts passing 
into each other in a bewildering procession. " At last 
they heard the fairy say 'Attention, children. Are 
you never going to look at me again ? ' . . . They 
looked, — and both of them cried out at once, ' Oh, who 
are you after all ? ' ' You are our dear Mrs. Doasyou- 
wouldbedoneby ' — ' No, you are good Mrs. Bedonebyas- 
youdid ; but you are grown quite beautiful now.' ' To 
you,' said the fairy, ' but look again.' ' You are Mother 
Cary,' said Tom, in a very low, solemn voice ; for he had 
found out something which made him very happy, and 
yet frightened him more than all he had ever seen. 
' But you are grown quite young again.' ' To you/ said 
the fairy. ' Look again.' . . . And when they looked 
she was neither of them, and yet all of them at once." 
Hegel, too, has a magic show ; and he is the fairy who 
says from time to time, Look again} Or Hegel is like 
a crystal gazer. The ordinal eye can see nothing 
where he looks ; but he reports to us the whole universe 
in miniature. Or Hegel is like Hamlet studying the 

1 Kingsley's Water Babies. — This parable must not be taken in the 
sense of ordinary Pantheism. The various thoughts (for Hegel) are not 
merely identical but different, and their differences require us to take 
them in a certain fixed order. 



20 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

clouds. "Do you see yonder cloud, that's almost in 
shape of a camel ? By the mass, and 'tis like a camel 
indeed. — Methinks it is like a weasel. — It is backed 
like a weasel. — Or, like a whale ? — Very like a whale 
. . . (They fool me to the top of my bent)." The seer 
compels one to recognise the shapes that he reports. 
He forces upon us each identification that his nimbler 
fancy arrives at. Till he told us of them, we should 
never have framed any such thoughts. Or Hegel's 
system is like a kaleidoscope — a very colourless kaleido- 
scope, peopled by the living atoms of pure thought. 
A turn and another turn and another turn give us un- 
expected rearrangements. According to Hegel, there is 
no one who turns the machine — Hegel himself would 
be shocked at the thought of doing so — how dare he 
thrust his own subjective opinions into such high and 
holy company ? The machine is self -moved ; there is 
a spirit in it ; its name is Thought or the Universe. By 
their own necessity — and in a definite sequence — the 
patterns rearrange themselves and melt into each other. 

A further consequence of Hegel's method is that, 
while we affirm the different phases as coexistent 
aspects, we are never able to bring them together. 
Thus, e.g., he cannot tell us what we derive respectively 
from ethics and from aesthetics. Each has its place; 
each yields its place. The monotonous alternation of 
praise and blame never pauses. There are no results 
in any department which are not at the mercy of a 
slightly deeper analysis. 

Or, if there is any qualification to be attached to this 
statement, it must refer to the highest stage in philosophy 
— that " absolute knowledge " which closes alike the 
Phenomenology and the Encyclopaedia. So far, Hegel 



PRELIMINARY OUTLINE 21 

has introduced us to nothing definitive. For a moment 
it might seem that we had a rock to build on ; the next 
moment Hegel had proved that our supposed rock was 
the usual old quicksand. But where does Hegel him- 
self stand ? From what point of view can he work, if 
no point of view has more than evanescent validity ? 
It is like the endeavour to apply the historic method 
to one's self. Even the most convinced advocate of re- 
lativity and limitation in man's moral outlook must 
hesitate to handle his own beliefs and principles upon 
historic methods. For himself, his beliefs must be 
ultimate. He knows that they are only an approxi- 
mation; but, being a limited and finite mind, he is 
compelled ordinarily to suppress that consideration. 
Absolute knowledge is the one portion of Hegel's system 
which does not pass away. While other parts seem to 
be stages in " appearance," this, which has no master 
over it, looks like " reality." Here we find one of the 
gravest arguments in support of the opinion that 
Hegel's position is Pantheistic. Other things are and 
are not; this is and abides — this vision of perfected 
logical insight, without beauty or love or goodness — 
this unclothed skeleton of abstract system. 

Probably Hegel takes pleasure in regarding reality 
as a sequence of phases because in this way he seems 
better able to vindicate its unity. As long as one is 
dealing with co-ordinate aspects, the unity of the Real 
seems little more than a name. Like the thing- with- 
many-qualities, like the Substance which, according to 
Agnosticism, is unknown, though every one of its many 
attributes may be known, reality is left ununified when 
we affirm many aspects in one Real. We have done 
nothing more than contradict ourselves, or render ex- 



22 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

plicit the antinomy which is implicitly present every- 
where. If, on the other hand, aspect yields to aspect 
or passes into aspect, then unity is safe. The trans- 
formations of the Notion, 1 in the course of its ideal 
evolution, provide equally for unity and for difference. 
If we reject this ingenious suggestion and fall back 
upon co-ordinate aspects, we ought to recognise what 
we are doing. We are setting limits to the human 
mind. We are recognising that for us it is impossible 
fully to solve the problems constituted by the nature 
of our thought. Our thought relates to each other a 
group of aspects which we know or believe to be unified 
in the Absolute ; but — unless by some trick like Hegel's 
— we cannot expound this unity from our standing- 
ground as finite intelligences. 

This idea of successive phases really involves the 
next point, namely, Hegel's principle of progress by 
contradiction. For the phases exclude each other. 
When one comes, another goes. Those at two re- 
moves may resemble each other (though of course they 
likewise differ); exclusion — sharp exclusion — is the 
only relation conceived or permitted between adjacent 
phases. 

III. Reality is a system, or a union, or a unity 
of opposites. Sometimes this is proved by showing 
one phase pass into its contradictory ; at other times 
proof is offered that the thing as it stands is self- 
contradictory. The latter is the more formidable argu- 
ment ; the former is Hegel's favourite method of state- 
ment. In discovering this alleged law, Hegel thinks 
that he has put his finger upon the very pulse of 
reality. It is in the light of this supposed law that he 
1 See below. 



PRELIMINARY OUTLINE 23 

feels able to reconstruct the universe in a system of " a 
priori " [i.e. necessary] thought — he uses the phrase at 
times. Once again we must recognise that even here 
Hegel is not the solemn trifler whom the vulgar take 
him to be. Most of us are ignorant of the contra- 
dictions that lurk in our thought — as ignorant as the 
men of Athens were in the days of Socrates. Kant 
has taught us that, wherever Time and Space are ruling 
"forms" of perception, there we shall encounter con- 
tradictions. Every part refers us for an explanation 
of it to other parts ; and the process is endless ; we 
can never reach a whole, and, until we do, we seem to 
have reached nothing. Hegel proposes not merely to 
generalise contradiction as significant of the finite — a 
conception possibly wider than the material world of 
Time and Space, — he takes contradiction to be the move- 
ment of the Absolute. If science as ordinarily studied 
under conditions of Time and Space fails to satisfy 
the mind — if finite explanations fail us — must we not 
supplement them by the "speculative" 1 explanations 
which philosophy supplies ? We must grasp both 
explanations as one system or one process. We must 
conceive finite nature, with all its contradictions, as the 
expression of absolute thought or reason, yet as the 
opposite of absolute reason ; and we must conceive that 
absolute thought fulfils itself by constantly passing into 
the finite and constantly rising above it. To Hegel, 
therefore, contradiction is not merely the law of the 
finite but the law of the absolute. The latter contra- 
dicts itself by producing the finite, and the finite, urged 
by the burden of its own contradictions, ultimately 

1 Almost entirely a term of praise. It does not imply among Hegelians 
less certainty in the result, but more capacity in the method. 



24 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

returns in thought [i.e. in man, or — in Hegel this is 
almost an equivalent — in philosophy] to the repose of 
the Absolute. The contradiction, if never healed, is 
always healing — it is not Hegel who believes in the 
"imbecility" of a "reason" which makes opposite 
assertions and then sits down in despair and cries out 
for " faith." If always with us, but yet always healing, 
contradiction upon a large view (it is claimed) may be 
described as always healed. 

"For an ye heard a music like enow 
They are building still, seeing the city is built 
To music, therefore never built at all, 
And therefore built for ever." 1 

When you paint a figure portrait, you give it a back- 
ground — perhaps a conventional red curtain or a vaguer 
grey cloud; or perhaps a little bit of pre-Raphaelite 
landscape. Ideally, the whole earth and indeed the 
whole boundless universe lies in the background ; but 
you ignore that. The most realistic of artists must 
select and conventionalise; he is painting one man 
— not the universe. Kant's method is to bring into 
clearer consciousness the slurred background of know- 
ledge. We live in moments, do we ? But every 
moment is a focus of all eternity and all immensity. 
Knowledge is a connectedness between the fragmentary 
" now " and the whole of existence. Hegel more boldly 
— and surely also more paradoxically — tries to show 
that " the instant grows eternity." The part is more 
than a part — it is a phase or embodiment of the whole. 
In the successive transformations which it undergoes 
in the laboratory of thought, it becomes its background. 
Indeed, it becomes everything. It generates the whole 
1 This is precisely the idealist gospel — valeat quantum. 



PRELIMINARY OUTLINE 25 

universe of the possible and the actual. For you treat 
it (being a part) as if it were the whole ; and then you 
strike upon limits and upon self-contradictions which 
give you no rest till you know " what God and what 
man is." The part involves the whole; this is proved 
since, if you take the part by itself, you treat as a [or 
as the] whole. 

The contradictory nature attributed to thought (or 
to reality) may be elucidated by the law that the 
knowledge of opposites is the same, 1 or by the principle 
of reaction in the historical development of thought. 
But in Hegel it stands above such helps. We may think 
it a doubtful way of defending the idea of system or 
the idea of gradation. Hegel thinks it a luminous 
certainty, precious for itself independently of its ap- 
plications. He thinks it gives him a living universe 
in contrast to a universe of fossil forms. It is merely 
sensuous thought, or merely subjective thinking, he 
tells us, which confronts things with each other in 
hard isolation. Speculative thought sees the differences 
vanish in a higher synthesis as fast as they emerge. 
Everything is a stage — and a fleeting stage ; nothing 
is more than a stage. Each flashes or flickers into sight 
for a moment, and then is gone. Everything is true, 
in a sense, and everything is false from a higher point 
of view ; and there is no possible way of reaching the 
higher truth except by the mediation of lower and 
falser beliefs. Truth is the synthesis of all possible 
half-truths. Truth is the result reached when we have 
been tossed from aspect to aspect until we are thrust 
into the very heart of things. If you try to go straight 

1 "The relation to its opposite or negative is the one essential relation 
out of which a thought cannot be forced." — Dr. E. Caird, Hegel, p. 162. 



26 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

to the centre, it evades you. Second thoughts — or 
possibly rather " third, which are a riper first " — are the 
best. First thoughts, simply because they come first, 
cannot possibly be more than a rough one-sided sketch 
of the reality of things. The aspects of truth come to 
us in a definite sequence; but finality is impossible, 
unless in absolute philosophy, or perhaps in the totality 
of the process of the universe; and the latter Hegel 
himself might admit is not accessible to human reason 
— only (if God is personal) to the Divine. 

Hegel thinks that he establishes the necessary con- 
nexion of things by following this rule; or that, by 
means of it, things develop their own inner nature in 
the Hegelian philosophy, which thus fulfils the ideal of 
science strictly so called. Few moderns will admit this 
bold claim. It was Hegel's great resource against the 
subjectivity of Schelling, and if we distrust it we regard 
Hegel himself as subjective and arbitrary. In fact, if 
we reject the dialectic, we might describe Hegel as an 
essayist. The essayist is one who, without much in- 
ductive gathering of materials, exhibits an unusual 
degree of insight in dealing with commonly known 
facts. When Mr. Bosanquet tells us that " Hegel's 
writing " is " attractive chiefly by the force and fresh- 
ness of its detail," 1 he is praising Hegel as an essayist. 
The distinctive quality of science is a rigorous method. 
Hegel's dialectic claims to be " scientific " in the highest 
sense; if we reject the claim, we do not necessarily 
reject everything in Hegel, but we reduce his merits to 
those of one who says various " forcible " and " fresh " 
things " in detail," as good essayists do. 

And it is hard for us to trust Hegel's " science." We 
1 Hegel's Philosojihy of Fine Art, Translator's Preface, p. vi. 



PRELIMINARY OUTLINE 27 

feel sure that so great a master of thought can pro- 
duce plausible and impressive reasons ad libitum for 
identifying any A with any B — or again for regarding 
any A as the contradictory of any B. There seems in- 
tolerable laxity in Hegel's view of what constitutes one 
term the negative of its fellow. Just when scientific 
rigour was most essential — just when Hegel, in criticis- 
ing Schelling, felt the need of rigour — he has flung us 
a brilliant literary paradox. One is tempted to transfer 
to Hegel his own parable of the painter who has only 
two colours on his palette. From all the infinitely 
varied and delicately graded relations of the Real, 
Hegel picks out merely two — bare identity and absolute 
contrast. He does not simply refer existence to these 
two co-ordinates, but treats diagonal movement alter- 
nately as horizontal and as perpendicular. The law 
of negativity is surely Vorstellung and not Begriff at 
all. Each negative in Hegel is supposed to be a definite 
negative and therefore to involve progress onwards. 
The logical statement does not fairly imply this. It 
could yield nothing but a barren alternation of + and — 
signs. Some other force than that of logic must have 
fixed the definite direction which thought follows. We 
must indeed remember a further point. Hegel does 
not propose to dispense us from the trouble of studying 
his transitions in detail, although he names a general 
law. On the contrary, he insists that a system is not 
a system or a science except in its detail. And in 
developing his details he reveals an embarrassing 
fertility of mind ; his method never shrinks into a 
schematic formalism as does the method of many of 
his expounders. We may restate then his position as 
affirming objective necessity, based on the contents of 



28 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

any thought, for passing from it to another and a more 
satisfying thought. 

The working out of the alleged principle of contra- 
diction in Hegel is singular. The old logic of con- 
sistency assumes that whatever is self-contradictory is 
self-refuted or self-condemned. This position seems 
to be enthroned once more in the recent writings of 
thinkers who are or have been Hegelians — Mr. Bradley 
and Professor Koyce. Mr. M'Taggart, again, with his 
usual effort to rationalise Hegel [for the " understand- 
ing " ?] insists that even Hegel himself is faithful to 
the test. There would be contradiction, if no "higher 
unity " emerged as the deeper truth, reconciling seem- 
ing opposition; it emerges, however, and staves off 
the deadlock. Popular opinion goes to the opposite 
extreme from Mr. M'Taggart, thinking of Hegel as the 
man who legitimated contradiction, and hailed it as the 
native law of thought. Here, as so often both views 
seem to be right. Here, as in so many other cases, 
Hegel meets the " Either — or of the ordinary conscious- 
ness " with a supercilious " Both, if you please." " Yes, 
or No ? " they ask of him ; he answers Yes, and No. 
Things including contradictions do exist. Everything 
includes contradictions. But the contradictions are not 
unrelieved ; for everything gives rise to a higher thing, 
where that which at a lower stage was contradictory is 
shown to us merged in unity. Accordingly, Hegel's 
attitude towards the logical test of non-contradiction is 
rather complex. He does not simply defy it, as is 
generally supposed. He is not frankly faithful to it, as 
Mr. M'Taggart boldly contends. What Hegel really 
holds is that, when you discover a contradiction, you 
are forced to regard that in which it inheres as an 



PRELIMINARY OUTLINE 29 

inferior phase of reality, and that you must discover 
its proximate neighbour in a phase of reality where 
the contradiction in question disappears. Having made 
that discovery, however, you have legitimated both 
phases — they are co-ordinate aspects of the real ; pro- 
vided always you subordinate A to B as lower to 
higher. If Hegel, e.g., subordinates morality to religion, 
he does not deny morality. He only — as he supposes 
— sees past it. 

IV. For completeness of statement we should be 
bound to introduce a fourth definition — Reality is the 
work of Thought. It is undesirable, however, to attempt 
here any dealing with this doctrine of Hegel's. The 
position may even be held that it does not add any- 
thing fresh to the three affirmations already reviewed 
— Reality is a system ; Reality is a system of various 
grades; Reality is a system which unites opposites. 
The new position — the idealist definition — undoubtedly 
affects the way in which Hegel conceives all his affirma- 
tions. For example, it is in the light of Hegel's idealist 
view of the real that our second point — reality as a 
graded system — has come under our notice in a different 
and perplexing form — reality as serial. While there 
are precedents in antiquity for a doctrine of Idealism, 
the emphasis laid upon thought as a guide to the 
nature of reality is very modern. From Kant in parti- 
cular Hegel inherits the assertion fully developed, yet 
burdened with a sceptical gloss. Kant holds that the 
world of our knowledge is a creation of thought ; yet 
he thinks it the unreal construction of the thought 
of individual men, all working similarly, but none of 
them attaining truth. Hegel seeks to dismiss this 
sceptical interpretation, and to state reality as being 



30 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

(necessarily) that which thought produces, conceives, or 
apprehends. 

After we have glanced at the teachings of Hegel's 
idealist forerunners, and after we have given a short 
sketch of his external life and of the doctrines of his 
British followers, we must proceed to study in detail 
the way in which Hegel seeks to make good his view 
of [the Absolute, or] Reality. Last of all we must 
seek to deal with the difficulties inherent in the subject. 
Did Hegel's idealism mean that nothing but thought 
exists ? Did it mean simply that nothing exists except 
what is in accordance with thought ? (" The real is 
the rational"; "reality is rational and righteous.") 
Did it mean that nothing exists except thinkers ? Or 
did Hegel attempt in some way to combine two or all 
of these views ? These and kindred questions must 
for the present be postponed. They will engage our 
attention later. 



CHAPTER III 

Remoter Antecedents — Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza 

The name Idealism carries us back beyond modern philo- 
sophy, by its suggestions and affinities, if not in strict- 
ness by its personal history. Plato, to whom it points, 
is the father of all idealists, and Hegel more than any 
other modern takes up the task of speculation on the 
grand lines upon which Plato and Aristotle worked. 
The very word idea was introduced into philosophy by 
Plato; and for centuries it was used in tolerably strict 
adherence to his lead. Descartes, according to Sir 
William Hamilton, 1 broke down that usage for the first 
time, and Locke soon after was criticised in England 
because of the novelty attaching both to language and 
thought in his " new way of ideas." Hence it came 
about that ideas, from being eternal and lofty arche- 
types of all reality, were degraded in Hume's philo- 
sophy to the rank of decaying sensations, faintly 
surviving in memory. Hence, too, it has come about 
that moderns are accustomed to associate idealism 2 with 



1 Reid, pp. 925, 926. 

2 The derivative terms are late of appearing in our language. The 

Oxford Dictionary quotes Norris of Bemerton for "idealist" — in the 

Platonic sense — but gives "idealism" as an almost modern importation 

from the French. 

31 



32 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

doctrines like Berkeley's and in a lesser degree like 
Malebranche's (if hardly like Fichte's genuine teach- 
ing) — with subjective idealisms that assert the reality 
of minds and deny the reality of matter. Kant him- 
self, the father of a new and subtle type of idealism, 
called by him " critical " or " transcendental," pro- 
pounds something which he regards as a " refutation of 
idealism " 1 in the subjective or Berkeleyan sense ; but 
Kant in his turn is marked with the same nickname by 
Hegel, and has subjective idealism imputed to him. 2 
It follows that opposite types of thought have been 
described by the same name, and that we may well find 
ourselves at the mercy of perverse associations if we 
study Hegel's " absolute idealism " expecting to find in 
it some modification of Berkeley. We may fare better 
if we look for some further unfolding of the thought of 
Plato. 

Plato's master, Socrates, is praised by Aristotle as 
having introduced the arts of "induction and defini- 
tion." These methods, however, were applied by 
Socrates in a narrowly if deeply practical spirit ; and 
even in ethics he, the first to call himself " philosopher," 
was conscious of being a " seeker of truth " rather than 
its possessor. 3 Thus "philosopher," like "essay," though 
it soon became an ambitious and aspiring title, was 

1 In the Critique oj Pure Reason. 

2 Wallace's translation of Logic, ed. 1, pp. 76, 77 — in contrast with 
"absolute idealism " — is that the first coinage of the latter term ? Dr. 
Harris (Hegel's Logic, p. 57) tells us that the phrases "subjective 
idealist" and "objective idealist" were used by Hegel in a review 
article in 1801. 

3 Contrast the Preface to Hegel's Phenomenology (p. vi), which calls 
on us to " advance to science or actual knowledge and lay aside the old 
name of love for knowledge " [the amateurishness of such an attitude ?]. 



REMOTER ANTECEDENTS 33 

modestly intended on its first introduction ; nor should 
we rightly interpret Socrates' modesty as part of his 
irony. Still, face to face with the blindness of tradi- 
tionary custom and the bewilderment caused by its 
decay, Socrates, with all his self -distrust, endeavoured 
to find some clear guiding light of principle. And, over- 
against the arbitrariness and selfishness which he and 
Plato traced in the methods of the Sophists, he set up 
the thought of binding rules for the art of human life. 
What Socrates recognised as man's hope and his 
need in practical affairs, Plato carried into all the 
regions of speculation. He adopted at the same time a 
more positive tone. To trace rationality in the world 
around was not with him a mere postulate or duty of 
the human mind ; it was the natural, necessary, trust- 
worthy working of thought. Things could be classified 
and defined. It was necessary to classify them. Things 
were nothing at all if they did not embody in them- 
selves thoughts — or ideas. One escaped from error to 
truth, from non-being to reality, when one grasped the 
idea behind the phenomenon. Sense, no doubt, was as 
shifting and baffling as Heraclitus could assert; but 
sense was not everything. Even in things of sense 
there were ideas, and we could reach them. The thesis 
of the first idealism was very much what Mr. M'Taggart 
regards as the thesis of Hegel's idealism, that " reality 
is " both " rational and righteous." 1 The proof of 
Plato's idealism, we may say, is simply this, that things 
will fall naturally into classes ; but the ancient world 
did not ask for proof so hungrily as does the modern 
world. It asked for a satisfactory answer to the 
question, Where or what is the Real? 

1 Studies in Hegelian Dialectic, p. 1 20. 
3 



34 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

This philosophy, so roughly indicated, is only a 
beginning of speculative thought; and Plato left it 
vaguer than he need have done, because the artist in 
him tended to encroach upon the philosopher. More 
strictly, a shortcoming on the speculative field itself is 
the dualistic element in the system. Plato's ideas 
explain much — but not everything. There is an ir- 
rational element blended with them somehow in the 
constitution of reality. By necessity the real always 
falls short of the ideal type. The Platonic doctrine 
of immortality shows us this dualistic element with 
startling plainness. The dualistic strain stands in 
contrast with Hegel's Monism, and perhaps also with 
the character of Hegel's idealism as absolute. 1 It may 
be held, however, that Hegel's own doctrine of material 
"contingency" has close affinity with Plato's Hera- 
clitean view of sense. 2 Again, Plato's ideas are prac- 
tically left standing side by side without manifest 
interconnexion. It is not that Plato failed to see that 
they ought to be connected. As visionary or poet, he 
believed they were related ; as thinker, he could not 
carry out his programme in detail. One thing he never 
tried. Being an ancient and not a modern, he did not 
group the ideas as contents of a divine consciousness. 
This was not done until Neo-Platonism adopted the 
Logos doctrine and passed into contact with Jewish and 
Christian thought ; since then it has been a common- 
place of ancient and modern Christian Platonism. 
When Plato himself connects the ideas with one an- 

1 Logic, 1st ed. of Translation, p. 79; compare Mr. M'Taggart, as 
above, p. 69. 

2 I find this view advanced by Professor Ritchie, Darwin and Hegel, 
p. 57. 



REMOTER ANTECEDENTS 35 

other, or with Theism, it is one of the number, the 
mysterious "idea of the Good," which is appealed to 
as somehow explaining the rest, and probably also as 
identical with Deity. 1 Moreover, it seems to have been 
a doubtful point with Plato, as afterwards in his school, 
whether there are ideas of artificial and mean things, or 
of those only which are natural and worthy. Plainly 
the whole doctrine is stated in an imperfect and half- 
poetical form. What it means essentially is the asser- 
tion of a real, permanent, or rational element in things. 
Details of statement are lacking, or, if present, are 
fanciful and suggestive rather than precise. 

Besides his work in formulating a theory of ideas, 
Plato has often been regarded as Hegel's forerunner in 
some of his details too — particularly in the dialogues 
which contain abstruse discussions upon abstract terms 
of thought, such as the Parmenides and the Sophist 2 
The second part of the Parmenides, however — discuss- 
ing the difficulties involved in viewing reality either as 
one or as many — seems merely to offer sceptical and 
negative conclusions. That at least is the lesson which 
lies upon its surface; and one is confirmed in this impres- 
sion by observing that, in the first part of the dialogue, 
Plato seems to be exposing the weaknesses of his own 
theory of ideas. The ideas were to stand for the per- 
manent element in phenomena; but the Parmenides 
argues that, if the phenomena partake of mutability, 
the ideas contained in them must also be affected with 
mutability. Accordingly it is possible to regard the 
dialogue as a mere demurrer, " What shall we say to 

1 It is hardly necessary to observe that moral goodness is at any 
rate far from prominent in this Platonic idea. 

2 So Hegel himself in the Logic, Trans., 1st ed., p. 127. 



36 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

all these difficulties ? Must we not say that hitherto 
philosophy has failed ? " In the Sophist, however, we 
find something like Hegel's Logic in the discussion 
of not-being. Not-being exists — that is the conclusion, 
explaining the possibility of error. Not-being is the 
other of Being and therefore involved in it. Here 
there seems to be something of that positive and con- 
structive albeit paradoxical development of " dialectic " 
which distinguishes Hegel from the merely negative or 
sceptical dialectic of Kant. The analysis of the most 
abstract terms of thought, even though it seems to issue 
in contradictions, is supposed none the less to demon- 
strate a connexion binding together different forms. 
Possibly Hegel is right in supposing that the Parmen- 
ides also shows Plato advancing along this track. The 
ordinary student will hardly discover that in the Par- 
menides ; but keener vision may read it between the 
lines. 

Another feature of interest in the Sophist is the 
construction of a provisional list of categories — Being, 
Not-being, Rest, Motion, Some and Other. An element 
of not-being (as the other of Being) enters into all. 
To that extent, the different ideas or categories in 
question are here connected ; one can hardly say that 
they are arranged in a system. This list and inter- 
connexion of categories is of interest rather as a 
prophecy of what is to come than as an actual 
achievement. 

When we pass from Plato to Aristotle, we seem to 
pass from poetry to prose, and from idealism to 
empiricism. The one fact regarding Aristotle which 
has worked its way into the general consciousness is 



REMOTER ANTECEDENTS 37 

his critical attitude towards Plato, and especially to- 
wards Plato's ideal theory. The ideas (in their lack of 
connexion) do not explain but reduplicate reality — or 
rather reduplicate some of its aspects ; change, move- 
ment, life are unthinkable in that frozen world. 
Things of sense are first substances, and things of 
thought are second substances. This, however, is only 
one side of Aristotle ; and, with all that is true and 
pungent here, it is yet his lower side. A different 
view is opened up when we find that, in his own 
Metaphysics, Aristotle conceives reality as matter 
becoming real by acquiring or passing into form. 
This is an evolutionary philosophy; it may be said 
to find the real in the process of things. And the 
dualism of form and matter, which dominated Plato 
and dogged Greek thought, is at least in part broken 
down when we learn that, if not abolished, mere 
matter is always on its way to abolition or to trans- 
formation into a higher type of being. Nor is the 
dualism absolute even under existing conditions. What 
from one point of view is matter, from another is form. 
Only at the foot of the evolutionary scale have we 
mere matter, just as at the top, in the Divine mind, 
we have pure form. If this seems to modern minds 
terribly in the air, it may suggest to us that there 
was a speculative if not even a poetical element in 
Aristotle as well as in his master. It is not a reasoned 
system, but it is full of suggestions impossible to 
merely empiricist thought. Add Aristotle's conception 
of movement to Plato's conception of ideas as con- 
stituting reality, and you have something very like 
Hegel's Logic. This is the highest side of Aristotle's 
speculative thought. Midway we may place his list 



38 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

of categories. This discussion, though it recurs again 
in his " First Philosophy " or Metaphysics, is conceived 
by Aristotle as a part of Logic, the science peculiarly 
of his own creation. His ten predicaments — Substance, 
Quality, Quantity, Relation, Place, Time, Situation, 
Condition, Action, Passion — are simply arranged along- 
side each other in a business-like way at the dictation 
of experience. They rise in importance when we con- 
sider their influence on Kant and through him on 
Hegel. 

When free speculation revived, or began to revive, 
with Descartes, a change was instantly manifest. 
Christianity had given the subject in experience a 
place from which he cannot be dislodged ; and there- 
fore the subjective note, in one way or other, rings 
through the whole of our epoch. The Ego is thrown 
to the front; ego cogito, ergo ego sum. Dualism is 
now not a lurking element somehow qualifying the 
real, but the most notable feature of reality. Reality 
is substance; but two substances exist — the purely 
active and the purely passive, — mind and matter. If 
this sounds to modern ears more simple and intelligible 
than the conceptions of Plato and Aristotle, that is 
merely because Cartesianism states the modern problem, 
and moves upon the lines which popular opinion still 
follows. In other words, we ourselves still in a sense 
belong to the Cartesian period, and must confess our 
sensitiveness to the thought of Descartes. All ages, 
indeed, must recognise a duality — unless they should 
prefer to say a triplieity — in existence. Being and 
thought, nature and spirit, the one and the many, 
stand over-against each other, whether we study the 



REMOTER ANTECEDENTS 39 

philosophy of ancients or of moderns. What is peculi- 
arly Cartesian is to define the contrast by the names 
mind and matter, and to regard the contrast as abso- 
lute. Even in Descartes himself, however, there is the 
suggestion of a triplicity, softening his fundamental 
dualism. For God is a higher substance than either 
mind or matter; and in one passage Descartes even 
lets fall the pregnant observation that in a sense God 
is the only substance. Still, his main line of thought 
is that which sets up the " natural dualism " of mind 
and matter, still recognised by " common sense." 

When thought is left confronted by a dualistic oppo- 
site, one or the other element must give way ; and it is 
not thought that will yield. Through all hindrances, 
in spite of all kinds of difficulties, thought unweariedly 
seeks in some sense for unity. Out of Descartes there- 
fore proceeds Spinoza. There may be other " streams 
of tendency " in the great Jewish Pantheist, going 
back to the speculations of his own race, or to fore- 
runners in the Pantheistic creed like Vico; but the 
main influence revealed in him is surely Cartesian. 
The filiation is plain enough. Distinguish and an- 
tagonise them as you like, still mind and matter are 
obviously connected as well as contrasted in the one 
system of absolute reality; and the question forces 
itself — how can they be connected ? Paradox may be 
heaped upon paradox. Animal mind, one of nature's 
awkward intermediate links, may be ruthlessly denied, 
if not by Descartes, by his followers. God may be 
called in to bridge by special machinery the gulf which 
a dualistic type of mind has dug for itself. After a 
time, the strain proves too great; and unity, even 
abstract and exaggerated unity, follows on the assertion 



40 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

of an unresolved dualism. In Spinoza accordingly we 
have a mind intoxicated with the thought of unity. 

And yet in Spinoza the unity is little more than a 
name. He asserts it, but, as Hegel would say, does 
not think it. There is one substance, we are told, 
but it breaks up into an infinite number of parallel 
and unconnected attributes, while we know only two, 
extension and thought. But the difference which sun- 
dered Descartes' world into two warring hemispheres is 
not conjured away by calling the two enemies " attri- 
butes " of a single inscrutable substance, nor by appeal- 
ing as constables of the peace to a ghostly band of 
additional attributes, unknown and unknowable, and 
so practically unreal. Further, when we are told that 
each attribute exhibits the whole nature of substance, 
and corresponds in parallelism to all the rest, Spinoza 
is saying what is quite .true of thought, but quite 
untrue of anything else. Thought knows extension — 
yes indeed ; but that simply implies that thought and 
extension are not on the same level, and are not 
random samples from a crowd. When one criticises 
Spinoza in the light of both Kant and Hegel, one sees 
that his two attributes are the two which make up 
the world of human reality. They are not warring 
hemispheres ; they interlock. They are not hemi- 
spheres at all; thought, as Hegel would say, "over- 
laps " 1 the world of extended matter, and holds it in 
its own grasp. Thought is first and last. It is both 
Logic and Philosophy of Spirit. Only the middle 
layer of the sandwich contains Philosophy of Nature. 
Thus, with help from Kant, we see how the ground 

1 Often translated for greater dignity "overreaches" — a somewhat 
odd phrase in English, while extremely literal. 



REMOTER ANTECEDENTS 41 

plan of Hegel's philosophy emerges as a reform of 
Spinozism. " Not substance but subject " is Hegel's 
terse and characteristically difficult way of expressing 
his modification of Spinoza's standpoint. When you 
take thought as your clue, you find that reality 
does not break up into an indefinite number of attri- 
butes, — partly known, mostly unknown, and therefore 
not verifiably connected with each other, — but into 
definite, knowable, and related aspects. Hegel believes 
in unity as strongly as Spinoza. But he insists, as it 
has been wittily expressed by Erdmann, that the unity 
shall not be a lion's den, with all the tracks leading 
inward and none outward. You must not only show 
that differences presuppose a unity, as of substance. 
You must also show that the unity (as a subject) 
breaks up necessarily into those differences which 
constitute the main outlines of known reality — an 
ambitious but a noble programme for philosophical 
thought. 

It may further be explained that, when writers 
with the Hegelian tinge repudiate Pantheism, they 
need not be taken to imply a doctrine of divine per- 
sonality, or to touch that problem at all. What they 
mean is to repudiate the conception of a substance 
repelling all predicates or attributes, a unity excluding 
all manifoldness, a being with no definite quality. 
Such a view had again and again been put forward 
by the Pantheistic schools of the past as the deepest 
view of reality. Hegelian critics rightly consider 
such a view not deep but blank. 



CHAPTER IV 

Proximate Antecedents — Kant, Etc. 

Literature. — At large, Dr. E. Caird's Critical Philosophy of 
Kant ; in brief, Professor A. Seth's Bevel, from Kant to Hegel [out 
of print]. Compare also Hegel's Logic, Eng. Trans., chaps, iii.-v. 

When we turn to consider the closer antecedents of 
Hegel's speculation, there can be no doubt that the 
head-waters of the stream are to be found in Kant. 
This may well appear strange to us. Kant desired to 
" prove all things." He hoped to perfect the work of 
criticism, and to preclude what he called — if in a some- 
what special sense — metaphysical " dogmatism." His 
aim was to define the limits and boundaries of possible 
knowledge. Hegel, on the contrary, does not admit the 
existence of any such limits, and has at least the 
appearance of being bent upon exposition more than 
upon proof. Still, the filiation is no great mystery. 
It was not mere recoil or reaction that urged thought 
out of the narrow limits of the Kantian groove into the 
vast ambitions of the Hegelian system. Kant himself 
believed that human thought had a native and irre- 
pressible tendency to embody itself in great speculative 
" ideas of reason." No other agnostic system has ever 
grappled with the whence and the why of metaphysical 
conceptions as Kant has done. No other agnostic 



PROXIMATE ANTECEDENTS 43 

system has been so many-sided, so plausible, indeed, so 
reasonable. But, great as he is, Kant is very delicately 
poised. Thought necessarily forces certain conceptions 
upon us ; yet we may be sure, on grounds of thought, 
that these conceptions fail to correspond with reality. 
The union of two such propositions is surely a forced 
one. Remove the second, and Kant's position carries 
you nine-tenths of the way towards Hegel's. 

Kant's own antecedents are not found in Descartes 
or Spinoza so much as in Locke and in Leibniz. The 
working of the critical spirit which tests all things is 
indeed discernible in Descartes' appeal at the outset to 
universal doubt; but his transition from universal 
doubt to universal certainty is all too hurried, and the 
dogmatic deductions of Spinoza are wholly alien to 
Kant. Like Leibniz and Locke, Kant begins with the 
individual mind, the tradition of Leibniz being the first 
to influence him. To Leibniz knowledge was an evolu- 
tion of the contents of the individual mind or monad, 
free from outside interference. It was never in touch 
with a reality beyond itself, though it was so adjusted 
as to mirror or rather to mimic the phases of the 
universe. These beliefs affected Kant chiefly in the 
abraded and popularised shape which they assumed in 
the philosophy of Leibniz's disciple Wolf — "the cele- 
brated Wolf," as Kant calls him. Thought (the thought 
of an individual thinker) produces knowledge out of its 
own resources — this doctrine Kant accepted from the 
Wolfians in youth ; and he never quite forsook it. The 
four "'attitudes of thought towards the objective 
world," which Hegel surveys by way of introduction 
to his lesser Logic} are — three-fourths of them — the 

1 Hegel counts three, subdividing the second. 



44 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

attitudes through which Kant's mind historically 
passed. Here as so often we find great illumination, 
when we can identify some of the ideal necessities 
traced out by Hegel with historical actualities. The 
"first attitude" of naif confidence in the power of 
thought, which we may identify with Wolf, was given 
up by Kant. It is the natural attitude for an early 
period. No one when he begins thinking is hampered 
with doubts as to the reliableness of his own thoughts. 
In time, however, Kant became the merciless critic of 
Wolfs dry-as-dust doctrines " of God, of the world, of 
the soul." And yet he continued to believe in their 
subjective necessity. The attitude of confident belief 
[in their contents] dropped off, but not the persuasion 
that mind necessarily works in us to these results. 
From one point of view the Ideas of Reason may be 
described as the ghost of the Wolfian philosophy sur- 
viving in Kant's maturer system. 

At first, however, the negative result came upper- 
most. Kant saw plainly that it was impossible to 
regard the empty formal process of thought conducted 
by Wolf as leading to material truth ; and to a large 
extent he threw himself into the arms of Lockian 
empiricism. In Locke himself we can observe that 
empiricism is not quite thorough-going; and Dr. E. 
Caird has shown that Kant was never so thoroughly 
at ease in empiricism, or so completely wrapped in 
" dogmatic slumber," as his own words might have led 
us to suppose. The decisive impulse to a new develop- 
ment was given by Hume. Hume exhibits the bank- 
ruptcy of empiricism. Far from explaining the attain- 
ment of knowledge in a better way than Wolf's 
philosophy, empiricism, which refers everything to 



PROXIMATE ANTECEDENTS 45 

sensation, cannot account for any one fragment of 
knowledge. All is illusion, and the sceptics are right ; 
that is the last word of empiricism. Curiously enough, 
Kant does not seem to have been touched by the full 
breadth or depth of Hume's negations. It was at one 
point, the analysis of cause and effect, that Hume's 
reasoning pricked him. He perceived that Hume's 
view of causation as customary sequence — while 
logically arrived at on the principles of empiricism — 
was fatal to the reality of causal connexion. Accord- 
ingly, Kant felt the necessity of trying some deeper 
philosophy. He makes the rather odd remark that, 
if Hume had perceived the destructive bearing of his 
views upon all knowledge, he must have reconsidered 
them. The Kantian philosophy might itself have been 
built upon less sceptical lines if Kant had penetrated 
the full extent and realised the secret relish and delight 
of Hume's scepticism. As it was, Hume's influence 
induced Kant to throw up empiricism, while the ghost 
of empiricism remained with him in his second and 
lower doctrine of noumena — those things-in-themselves 
which are not Ideas of Reason but assumed causes of 
sensations. Thus Kant's " attitude towards the " ex- 
ternal " world " was largely empiricist. The individual 
mind, he thought, was not merely in the presence of 
an alien reality, but under influences proceeding from 
it. Only, this alien reality could not reach through 
into knowledge. In view of this remaining tinge of 
empiricism, Hegel ranks Kant — contemptuously enough 
— as offering merely a modification of the " second 
attitude of thought towards the objective world." 

Two standpoints had been tried and had failed, and 
Kant's great treatises, from the Critique of Pure 



46 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

Reason onwards, represent the effort to formulate a 
tertium quid — holding of both, different from either. 
Speaking roughly, we may say that the Critique of 
Pure Reason deals with the True, the Practical 
Reason with the Good, and the Judgment with the 
Beautiful. Rightly or wrongly — or perhaps with 
partial but not with entire justification— subsequent 
philosophy, and especially that stream of thought 
which ends in Hegel, is very much more interested in 
the Pure Reason than in the other books. We may 
say that Hegel's task is to rewrite the Critique of 
Pure Reason from different presuppositions. We may 
say, indeed, that something very similar is incumbent 
as a preliminary task in philosophy upon every 
modern mind. No one who has not passed by that 
road can be considered to-day as an educated thinker 
in any part of the field of philosophy. Positions 
established in the region of the True must affect our 
conclusions everywhere. Truth is not merely one part 
of the field of knowledge ; it is a name, and an august 
name, for the whole. And so the book which deals in 
memorable and original fashion with first principles of 
truth deals with first principles of all things. Such 
a book is the Critique of Pure Reason. 1 Although 
Kant had designed to write a Metaphysic of Nature, 
summing up in systematic form the results of his 
critical survey, the whole apparatus of proof and 
definition is contained in the Critique. 

Kant's statement of his problem concentrates atten- 
tion on principles such as the law of cause and effect. 

1 Kant himself opposes "Pure Reason" to "Mixed Reason," 
i.e. reason mixed with a posteriori elements in experience. Practical 
Reason is not the opposite but one of the forms of Pure Reason. 



PROXIMATE ANTECEDENTS 47 

In his technical language, these are called " Synthetic 
judgments a priori." They are necessary to intel- 
lectual experience ; and therefore he thinks that even 
Hume must upon fuller reflection have admitted that 
they were valid in some sense. They are a priori, 
for Hume has shown that experience can yield nothing 
but what is customary and casual — nothing universally 
or necessarily true. And they are synthetic — they are 
knowledge, not platitudes ; but thought, as Logic teaches, 
and as the failure of Wolf's effort, to extract positive 
knowledge out of abstract thought, strongly confirms 
— thought is analytic or self -identical. Whence then 
comes knowledge ? True or false, whence comes this 
world of coherent useful experiences ? Kant's answer 
is, From the meeting of the inner and the outer. 
Thought — somehow — forgets its native character and 
becomes synthetic at the touch or influence of external 
reality. Sense — somehow — ceases to be blind and 
futile when it is taken up into rational thought. Hence 
results human knowledge — the strange operation of 
human thought upon an unknown datum. We may 
call this experimental knowledge a morbid product of 
the mind, but we must admit that it is as beautiful and 
wonderful as that other morbid product, a pearl. 

Kant is thus no less completely sceptical than Hume 
regarding the objective truth of man's knowledge, 
though he deals in a more serious spirit with its 
relative validity and subjective usefulness. So far as 
we have seen, there are two reasons for this scepticism. 
One is the conception of the nature of thought which 
Kant inherited from Wolf. If thought is formal, 
knowledge must come to thought from without (Locke), 
or else must imply some abnormal development within 



48 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

(Kant). This is the point upon which Dr. E. Caird 
fastens. He argues that, if we regard Wolf's view of 
thought as ill founded, there is no reason why Kant's 
positions should involve the rejection of the objective 
truth of any necessary development of thought. Kant 
has, however, a second reason for scepticism, in the 
belief that two or more heterogeneous elements come 
together in all human consciousness. It may of course 
be held that this ground for scepticism is removed 
when we recast our views of the essential nature of 
thought. But it will be well to consider Kant's 
positions a little more fully. 

Kant recognises four elements in human experience 
and knowledge. There is matter of sense, due to 
things-in-themselves outside us; there are subjective a 
priori forms of sense, namely, time and space ; there 
are categories or principles of the understanding ; and 
there are principles in a higher sense, the Ideas — ideas 
which are Platonic in dignity, if not in reliableness — 
of Reason (as contrasted with mere understanding). 
These last " things-in-themselves " necessarily start to 
view within the mind, and, having done so, urge forward 
the whole process of knowledge, although from the 
nature of the case they never can find embodiment in 
phenomenal reality. 

The first assumed factor, the (more familiar) thing- 
in-itself, is logically the weakest and least defensible 
element in Kant's epistemology. It is a survival of 
empiricism. And what makes empiricism plausible to 
half -trained thinkers makes the thing-in-itself (of this 
definition) credible even to Kant — namely, the diffi- 
culty of supposing that mind, conceived as individual, 
should attain to knowledge of what is around it 



PROXIMATE ANTECEDENTS 49 

unless by means of a contribution from without. 
Logically, however, we never can prove from Kant's 
own premises the existence of such things-in-them- 
selves. The utmost he could claim to say is that 
something unknown and unknowable happens to start 
the mind upon its new career (of experimental know- 
ledge). To call that vague Something an influence from 
a thing-in-itself is unproved assertion, or dogmatism, 
the antipodes of a truly Critical Philosophy. 

Secondly, there are the forms of Time and Space — 
a 'priori endowments of the mind, which as a matter of 
fact accompany all our experiences. We are compelled 
to attribute them to mind. No chemistry of blending 
sensations will ever explain a first experience in time ; 
the conception is as self-contradictory as (taken 
literally) a First Cause. We cannot, however, logically 
explain why Time and Space should always be with us. 
Logic suggests as at least a possible form of reality or 
phase of experience one "where space and time are 
not." Thus it is not a mere question of names when 
Kant contrasts his ^Esthetic (doctrine of the a priori 
contributions to sense knowledge) with the transcen- 
dental Logic, which deals with the contributions of 
understanding and the influences of reason. Might 
Kant not suppose that Time and Space are both subject- 
ive and objective, both a priori and a posteriori ? 
He could not, and that for two reasons. First, the 
hypothesis is superfluous, and to be rejected on the law 
of parsimony. If I am looking through yellow glasses, 
it is needless to suppose that by a miraculous coinci- 
dence, the landscape on which I am looking happens to 
be yellow in itself. But, secondly, the supposition that 
Time and Space are objectively real is shown (in the 
4 



50 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

second part of the Logic ; the Dialectic) to give rise to 
Antinomies {e.g., Has the world a beginning in time ? 
It cannot have. Had the world never a beginning ? 
That is inconceivable). This is one of the most im- 
portant novel contributions made by Kant to agnostic- 
ism — the emphasis upon contradiction, not in a casual 
or random mood of mockery, but as part of a sober 
theory. If mind transgresses its fixed limits, and tries 
to define noumena, then, says Kant, it necessarily falls 
into self-contradictions. This is a formidable addition 
to the armoury of doubt. If agnosticism is not to 
lead us forward from this point to pure scepticism, we 
must admit that Time and Space, which clamour for 
contradictory verdicts from the mind, are not part of 
the seen fact but part of the defective human apparatus 
of seeing. Such is Kant's finding. We may modify it ; 
but it will be difficult to set it altogether aside. 

The remainder of the great Critique follows the 
guidance of Aristotelian or formal logic, which Kant 
regarded as the pattern of a perfect science, finished at 
one stroke. Most interpreters, however, think that his 
debt was less than he supposed, and that the logician's 
list of judgments had not very much to do in guiding 
Kant's thought to his list of twelve categories. While 
he tells us that his list — arrived at, as he believes, by 
this appeal to formal logic — is alone systematic and 
exhaustive, yet he holds that his task is the same which 
Aristotle undertook when he drew up, in more empirical 
or less systematic fashion, a list of predicaments. Nor 
need Sir William Hamilton's protest against this 
identification distress us greatly. As Hamilton him- 
self suggests, the contrast at its broadest is only one 
between affirmations that may be made (in Aristotle) 



PROXIMATE ANTECEDENTS 51 

and affirmations that we may make (in Kant). Here, 
then — half linked with Aristotle — we have an important 
advance towards Hegel's Logic. As Hegel recognises 
many more antinomies than Kant, so also he discovers 
many more categories — some of them, as we shall see, 
in a different part of Kant's own system and under 
other names. The treatment by which Kant's list 
is transformed into a Hegelian series is very clearly 
indicated by Dr. Caird. Modality 1 is struck out as 
irrelevant. Relation — if it is not rather a universal 
name for a category or thought - determination as 
such — is expanded threefold, and becomes the second 
part of the Hegelian Logic (the doctrine of Essence). 
The first part of the Logic (the doctrine of Being) is 
composed of Quantity and Quality taken in inverse 
order, the subdivisions of Quality being named anew, 
and a third heading, Measure, being added to Quality 
and Quantity. Finally, the pith of the Logic is found 
in part three, the doctrine of the Notion — a part of 
Logic wholly new in comparison with the categories of 
Kant, and new in its claim to entire logical strictness. 

Kant repeats his version of this doctrine of rational 
connectedness in a second form, which he regards as 
complementary to the first. The first, the list of 
categories proper, is meant to apply to conceptions, or 
terms, or objects; the second, the principles of judg- 
ment, are meant for propositions judgments or relations 
between objects. We need not pause over this or over 

1 Kant's categories are as follows : — 

Quantity. Quality. Eelation. Modality. 

Unity. Reality. Substance and Accident. Possibility. 

Plurality. Negation. Cause and Effect. Actuality. 

Totality. Limitation. Reciprocity. Necessity. 



52 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

other details of Kant's statement, like the schematism 
of the categories, by which they are dovetailed into 
Time and so indirectly into Space. If Kant had had 
a less superstitious reverence for Aristotle's Logic 
as a doctrine of thought, he probably might have 
simplified his great Critique to a large extent. We 
do not meet with anything essentially new till we 
reach the Dialectic, with its ideas of reason. Two of 
these terms recall Plato, and the second at least 
suggests Hegel once more. In Kant's nomenclature, 
Dialectic stands in contrast to Analytic as the negative 
to the positive, the destructive to the constructive. The 
categories (with their aliases and companions) represent 
the legitimate employment of thought for purposes of 
human experience or knowledge. Mind defines objects 
as one, as many — as substances, as causes, etc. That 
activity of mind is held to be both natural and 
necessary. It is " transcendentally " justified, i.e. 
experience guarantees it in this sense, that, without 
such activity of mind, there would be no such thing 
as orderly experience. Experience cannot prove it, 
since it presupposes it; or experience proves it only, 
but most conclusively, by presupposing it, — that and 
nothing else is what Kant means by transcendentalism. 
But mind is not satisfied with determining objects side 
by side in Time and Space or with establishing definite 
universal "laws" of relation between such objects. 
Mind craves some fuller harmony in things, some 
deeper unity than is revealed in the most perfect 
mechanism. And just here, according to Kant, mind 
oversteps the narrow limits which " transcendental " 
necessity marks out for its use. Definite objects, with 
definite relations between them, mind must constitute 



PROXIMATE ANTECEDENTS 53 

for itself (on the basis of sense) if it is to possess an 
orderly experience. A more coherent system, with 
more intimate relationships, is craved by the mind; 
but in vain; it cannot show its title-deeds to that 
coveted possession. The whole expanse of Time and 
Space affords no room for such a thought-knit system 
of hypothetical realities as man yearns for. 

" That type of Perfect in his mind 
In Nature can he nowhere find." 

Yet the " type of Perfect " haunts him, urging him, 
if such a thing were possible, to sum up infinite time 
and measure infinite space. The whole of human 
knowledge is due to the pricking of this spur within 
the mind; and that is well. Error begins when we 
suppose that we possess actual knowledge of that 
which is no more than a vague impulse moving us to 
the knowledge of lower things. Under such a belief, 
we interpret mind as a soul -substance — simple, unde- 
composable, and therefore immortal (Wolf's Rational 
Psychology). Further, we interpret the world dog- 
matically, either as limited or as unlimited, both views 
being equally plausible at the first blush, and equally 
untenable when we weigh the counter-arguments — 
both, in fact, being empty, since the world which is 
known to us is nothing more than our subjective 
phenomenon [not a reality to which we may attach 
objective predicates — not a "thing in itself"]. Thus 
arises Rational Cosmology. Our final error is perpe- 
trated when we interpret the ideal systematic unity of 
all things, the mind's unreal and unrealisable aspiration, 
as a fact, a personal being, God (Rational Theology). 

Very noticeable here is Kant's inclination to a 



54 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

Pantheistic conception of God. Elsewhere and pre- 
eminently in the Religion within the Bounds of Pure 
Reason he falls back into a narrow individualistic 
Deism, of an unduly moralistic type. Hegel therefore, 
whose work is so largely a shaping of Kant's thought 
to new issues, draws but little from Kant's direct deal- 
ing with religion. But he owes very much to this 
conception of God as the absolute all-inclusive unity 
of all things and all thought, and to the corresponding 
conception of religion — suggested though not affirmed 
by Kant — as a consciousness of this absolute Thought 
or absolute Whole. Noticeable also is Kant's criticism 
of the three traditional Theistic proofs. His reason- 
ings are forestalled partly by his Antinomies — in 
which, e.g., the conception of a First Cause, pointed 
to in the Cosmological argument, is discredited — partly 
by his view of the categories as limited to the (finite) 
objects of (ordinary) experience. The Ontological 
argument of Anselm and Descartes calls for a new 
pronouncement from him. Kant implies that this is 
the one real Theistic argument; both the others, he 
tells us, have to fall back upon it. Kant also frees it 
from the appearance of arbitrariness and extravagance 
which it presented in the statement of its original 
advocates. They did not make plain how any one 
individual idea could guarantee its objective existence ; 
Kant shows that the idea in question is not one in- 
dividual idea among a crowd of others, but is the 
background or complement of all the rest. If know- 
ledge is valid — i.e. if we know reality — God is known, 
for God is the absolute reality; or, as Kant puts it, 
God is the Idea or the Ideal suggested by every 
thought we frame. There is an immense amount of 



PROXIMATE ANTECEDENTS 55 

Hegelianism implied here, in spite of the neutralising 
dose of scepticism in which Kant contrives to wrap 
it up. 

Summing up Kant's scepticism in the Critique of 
Pure Reason, from the Hegelian point of view, we 
abscribe it then, secondly, to dualism. Kant finds that 
knowledge contains two elements — thought and sense. 
He counts these two elements distinct and separate, 
because he cannot show how knowledge should come 
to us in the garb of space and time, while yet he 
knows that it does so come to us. This dualism takes 
on a darker colouring in view of Kant's (unproved and 
indemonstrable) assumption, that experimental know- 
ledge, with its sense forms, is called into exercise by 
the alien influence of things-in-themselves. A duality 
of thought and sense within experience is wilfully 
regarded as an origin of experience out of two distinct 
elements. Kant also contrasts the Ideas of Reason 
with the more limited forms of understanding. Hence 
between these two regions there seems to be disclosed 
yet another bottomless gulf. Perhaps, however, we may 
regard this not as a fresh difficulty, but as a necessary 
result of the use of the same method which gave us 
the previous dualism — that method under which dis- 
tinctions harden into absolute separation. The Ideas 
are indeed under a further condemnation. They must 
find their actualisation in the endlessness of time and 
space; and they cannot — there is no totality there. 
But this fresh criticism on the Ideas is somewhat dis- 
credited when we find Kant condemning the finite 
forms of understanding in their turn, because they do 
not conform to the "type of perfect in the mind." 
Criticism which plays off each of two things against 



56 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

the other is clever but baseless; and Kant is here 
guilty of playing off Ideas against categories and 
categories against Ideas. 

Hegel tries in the Philosophy of Nature to show- 
that we can explain the necessity for thinking 
existence under forms of time and space. That 
problem, formally at least, is discussed nowhere else 
in Hegel's works. On the other hand, to show that 
the categories and the Ideas are part of one great 
system of thought, is a task undertaken in the Logic. 
Its third part — the Notion — may be said to be 
obtained by treating Kant's (illusory, subjective) Ideas 
as another type of category, and the highest of all 
— not illusory but true; not merely subjective but 
profoundly objective. Reality is not to be defined 
simply as a mechanism, but as a self-contained 
Harmony or Whole. And Hegel's bent is to show that 
sense is not the exclusion but the fulfilment (or, the 
raw material) of thought; that mechanism is merely 
a stage in conceiving, a means towards realising, 
reality as organic and rational. Where Plato and 
Aristotle say Idea and Phenomenon, Kant says 
Thought and Sense. Hegel has the same solution 
for both alleged " dualisms." 

Kant's other works do not contribute in equal 
measure to Hegel's stock-in-trade ; but they introduce 
us to results which make it harder for Kant to main- 
tain his delicately poised assertion of the necessity, 
usefulness, and unreality of the highest conceptions of 
human thought. 

In the Critique of Practical Reason Kant breaks 
through the magical web of scepticism with which he 
had surrounded himself, for now he makes the as- 



PROXIMATE ANTECEDENTS 57 

sumption that in the moral consciousness we know 
objective reality. This assertion exposed him to attack 
by one of the older English Kantians, that strange 
defender of Christianity, Dean Mansel, who was so 
zealous in proving religious doubt incompetent that he 
failed to perceive the danger of representing religious 
assertions as meaningless. Mansel holds that all human 
consciousness, even the consciousness of duty, is rela- 
tive, subjective, unreal, and therefore that what is bad 
in man — e.g., exterminating enemies in cold blood, or 
punishing the guiltless in order that the guilty should 
go free — may be good in God. Others may let it stand 
to Kant's credit that here at least, in its gravest moods, 
he trusted the human mind. Kant tried to justify this 
change of attitude by his analysis of the " Categorical 
Imperative of Duty." While he held that abstractly 
self -consistent thought could never generate knowledge 
of an object, he held that (knowledge, feelings, and 
conscience being given) abstractly self-consistent con- 
duct was a test which led to real knowledge of duty. 
In the consciousness of duty (thus vindicated or ex- 
plained) Kant found a Postulate of Freedom : " I can 
because I ought." Here, however, dualism returns upon 
us raised to the pitch of self-contradiction, when Kant 
asserts that man's conduct is phenomenally determined 
but noumenally free. This indeed is a new dualism. 
It is not sense versus thought, but sense knowledge 
{i.e. sense with thought) versus a higher form of 
thought. To do justice to his moral postulate, Kant 
must have treated the phenomenal determinateness of 
conduct as mere human seeming, freedom on the 
contrary as Divine and objective truth. But it is hard 
to maintain an attitude of distrust towards an orderly 



58 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

fabric of knowledge which is a necessary result of 
human faculties ; and thus Kant once more plays off the 
lower against the higher, and makes his moral " postu- 
late " idle. The phenomenal determinateness proves to 
be the predominant partner. It makes the stronger 
impression on our thoughts and feelings. For pheno- 
mena are always with us, while noumena are mysterious 
and half-forgotten absentees. 

The second moral postulate — Immortality — shows us 
this dualism in a more familiar shape. The law of 
reason in the conscience exacts obedience from man's 
lower nature. This latter is so alien to the law of 
reason that it never can perfectly be subject to it, but 
in infinite time it may indefinitely approximate to the 
unattainable goal. Hence man must be immortal. If 
the law is to be obeyed at all, it can only be obeyed 
when endless ages have run their course. We cannot 
wonder that Hegel poured contempt upon this way 
of proving immortality — not by what is actually or 
potentially good in man, but by alleged limits which 
eternally separate him from goodness. 

The third postulate is God. God is not to help man 
to be good ; from Kant's narrowly moralistic point of 
view, Divine grace would sully the purity of moral 
motives. Eight must be done without help and with- 
out hope of reward. Nevertheless on a larger view it 
is a moral postulate that goodness should lead to happi- 
ness, and this cannot be a certainty unless God is over 
all, while if that be true virtue is unfailingly safe. 

The metaphysical result of these postulates may be 
stated as follows — two Ideas (God and the Soul) out of 
three, which were all regarded formerly as simply 
helping to constitute experience in a useful way, are 



PROXIMATE ANTECEDENTS 59 

now defined as being by moral necessity actual facts. 
We have listened patiently to Kant's paradoxes. We 
have learned that what we know, or necessarily think 
of, cannot exist, and that what exists cannot be known. 
Now we learn that what we necessarily think of 
necessarily (from moral considerations) exists, though 
its unknowableness is still asserted. Scepticism is 
wearing pretty thin when the soul, whose existence we 
might not affirm, turns out to be certainly immortal, 
and when the God who was to be a mere ideal is 
defined as a personal ruler. One should perhaps add 
that Kant does not formally identify the free and 
immortal moral soul with that soul-substance which he 
drove away with cries of contempt from the intellectual 
world. But what else can it be ? The definition may 
be vastly improved, but the reference surely must be 
identical ? There is more ground perhaps for question- 
ing the identity of the God of the Pure Eeason with 
Him of the Practical Reason. One is an ideal totality 
pantheistically conceived ; the other is a personal and 
almost a limited Being, harmonising discrepancies ab 
extra. It is doubtful, therefore, whether Kant's postu- 
lates yield as much as they seem to promise. But, in 
some better form than Kant's, moral postulates may 
teach us lessons for which we shall search in vain 
throughout Hegel's great system. As they stand, 
they show us at least that Kant has directed many 
shrewd knocks against his own scepticism regarding 
knowledge. 

In the Critique of Judgment, Kant deals primarily 
with Beauty. And here the dualism of sense and 
spirit disappears altogether. The beautiful is not the 
ideal apart from sense or in spite of sense, but in 



60 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

sense. More than this must be said. Kant, who finds 
teleology or "final cause" in beauty, finds the same 
category or conception embodied in organic life. All 
processes of life are for the sake of the organism or the 
species ; they cannot be otherwise described. This is 
the last of the shocks which Kant's scepticism has to 
encounter from the development of the Kantian philo- 
sophy. The "type of perfect," no longer imprisoned 
in the " mind," takes to itself bodily form in material 
" nature." This is true as to beauty ; and here 
accordingly light falls upon Hegel's highly respectful 
treatment of art as a phase in religion. But the 
actualisation of the "type of perfect" is also true of 
organic life. We may call life the Achilles' heel in a 
thoroughly naturalistic view of the universe. Life and 
thought are things which materialism has no room 
for. It does its best to ignore them, or ridiculously 
ascribes their origin to accident. But they are splendid 
realities; and therefore Philosophies of Nature, like 
Schelling's or Hegel's, when they trace out a rising 
scale of manifestations of the ideal in nature, have here 
at least a stronghold from which they will scarcely be 
dislodged. And if Schelling and Hegel are too fine 
spun for us, we may catch a glimpse of the same truth 
by an intelligent study of evolution. It is gratuitous 
to assume, with the naturalistic school, that the 
starting-point and the lowest stages in evolution are 
boundlessly significant, while its ideal goal and its 
higher stages have no significance at all for the 
ultimate definition of reality. The opposite is true. 

A different use of Kant's material is made by Lotze 
—with influences from Leibniz — when he contrasts 
mechanism with teleology, the world of forms with the 



PROXIMATE ANTECEDENTS 61 

world of values (according to Hegel, mechanism is 
teleology less completely defined). Lotze holds that 
mechanism is only seeming, while the values of Truth 
and Beauty make known to us the inner meaning of 
that Divine or objective reality conceived by us as the 
world-mechanism. Along a similar line of thought 
Ritschl's theology arrives at its perplexing doctrine of 
"judgments of value." That doctrine looks back to 
other elements in the Critique of Judgment, where 
we have certainly a more pleasing conception of the 
personal God than in the Critique of Practical Reason 
— not as the giver of blessedness to merit, but as the 
Being who overrules nature for moral ends, and makes 
the world of things subservient to persons, and who so 
far at least is thus the helper or even the fountainhead 
of human goodness. 

Kant's scepticism is equal to all the attacks which 
his own thought makes upon it. Organisms, not being 
necessary parts of a world of definite-objects-under- 
definite - laws, are not " transcendentally " verified ; 
therefore they are by one remove further still from 
reality than is the world of ordinary phenomena. The 
conception of an organism, like the Ideas of reason, is a 
guide to man's study, but not a revelation of the nature 
of reality. For the third time, therefore, in the third 
Critique, lower conceptions are played off against the 
higher. But let there be no mistake. The subject of 
the Critique of Judgment — final cause (in contrast to 
mechanism) — is the Ideal of Reason, or the philo- 
sophical definition of God, under another name. 1 

1 Hegel's fourth or, as he numbers it, third attitude of thought can 
only be regarded as a parenthesis in the development under review. It 
is the doctrine of Immediate Knowledge or Intuition, as represented by 



62 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

The additions which Kant's later books made to the 
Critique of Pure Reason had their chief interest — at 
least to Hegel — in showing how hard it was for Kant 
to preserve the sceptical interpretation of his system. 
And the work of a distinguished link between Kant 
and Hegel — the work of Fichte — may be similarly 
regarded. Kant's analysis of the human mind left off 
with a plurality of elements, whose mutual connexion 
was unexplained — data of sense a 'posteriori, forms of 
sense a priori, categories a priori, and — at a further 
remove — Ideas a priori. This duality or plurality 
becomes in Kant's interpretation an actual dualism. 
The maximum Kant has proved or tried to prove is 
that within experience we have elements %vhich we 
cannot reduce to one or intelligibly connect together. 
Or, more precisely, we experience under forms of time 
and space, and it is impossible to say why we do so. 
But what Kant asserts is the composition of experience 
out of several alien elements. Fichte accordingly tries 
to connect with each other by rational necessity those 
elements of mind which Kant had at best merely 
catalogued side by side — which at worst he had anta- 
gonised to each other. Fichte's undertaking is the 
next step in a rational or dogmatic reply to scepticism. 
Kant may have shown that we necessarily or uniformly 
develop certain beliefs in the process of knowledge. 
But this vindication does not carry us beyond sub- 

Jacobi. We find a rough but sufficient analogy in the Scottish philo- 
sophy, i.e. in Eeid's answer to Hume as contrasted with Kant's. Hegel 
is comparatively lenient to Jacobi — probably in order to make his con- 
demnation of Kant more emphatic. Assertions even of immediate know- 
ledge [all knowledge is mediation, and ultimately says Idealism, self- 
mediation] are a kind of counterpoise to sceptical denials of the power of 
thought. 



PROXIMATE ANTECEDENTS 63 

jective necessity — the cloak in which every hallucina- 
tion masquerades as a truth. It is only a statement of 
fact — if of fact on a very wide scale. If we can fill up 
the gaps — if we can detect necessary law in the facts of 
human consciousness — if we can show that what is, 
must be, the necessity becomes objective or rational, 
and scepticism is finally routed. 

An important consequence depends on this change. 
Henceforth we are dealing — or are thought to be deal- 
ing — not with mind as individual and human, but 
with mind as objective. If it be said that mind which 
is not individual is an unknown quantity and un- 
intelligible, we may define the objective mind pro- 
visionally as all mind. Wherever mind is, it will 
operate thus — let us be done with asserting "the 
relativity of human knowledge " when we simply mean 
that knowledge is a relation. 

It is desirable that we should clearly mark Fichte's 
real position, since ordinary opinion, and even the 
dictionary makers, who are at the mercy of the popular 
compends and histories of philosophy, attribute to 
Fichte the paradox of solipsism. Nothing could be 
more false. When his fellow-philosophers — led, I pre- 
sume, by Schelling and his school 1 — branded Fichte as a 
" subjective idealist," they meant nothing more than 
that Fichte describes reality too much in terms of 
mind, too little in terms of objective nature. Hence 
Schelling's contribution to philosophy takes the form 
of a philosophy of nature parallel to Fichte's philo- 
sophy of mind. The two need reconciling or unifying ; 
and Schelling offers an ultimate metaphysic which tells 
of an " indifferent " mind-cum-natural existence to be 
1 Compare footnote 2 on p. 32. 



64 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

known by "intellectual intuition." It is quite open, 
however, for an admiring monographist like Professor 
Adamson to contend that Fichte was on the right lines, 
and (at least in regard to nature, says Professor Adam- 
son) occupied a safer position than either Schelling or 
Hegel. 

Other peculiarities of Fichte concern us little, unless 
we ought to mention his triple rhythm of Thesis, Anti- 
thesis, Synthesis, which — following up Kant's triads of 
categories and of Ideas of Reason — helped at least 
externally to pioneer the way for Hegel. We cannot 
dwell upon those points in which Fichte is the successor 
of Kant rather than the precursor of Hegel or Schelling. 
Nor need we dwell on his way of expounding the unity 
of mind. Hegel's way is different. 

The place of Hegel may be roughly indicated by 
comparing him with Schelling and Fichte. All three 
interpret Kant's work constructively, as a body of 
positive truth regarding mind or thought as such. 
Fichte offers a kind of philosophy of Mind or Spirit. 
Schelling places alongside of that — Hegel would say 
prefixes to it — a philosophy of Nature. The roots of 
both philosophies are found by Hegel (when he reaches 
maturity), not in a region of feeling or half-conscious 
thought as Schelling supposed, but in a region of clear 
thought, — in a Logic. 1 

1 Dr. Baillie (HegeVs Logic) leads evidence to show that the direct 
influence of Fichte and Schelling upon Hegel was not great. 



CHAPTER V 

Hegel's Life and Writings 

Literature. — German. — " The main authorities for the life of 
Hegel are the biographies of Eosenkranz arid Haym — the former a 
pupil and devoted disciple of Hegel, the latter a critic whose 
opposition to Hegel's philosophical principles has passed into a 
kind of personal bitterness, which misconstrues his simplest 
actions. Some additional details may be derived from Hotho 
(' Vorstudien f iir Leben und Kunst '), from Huge (' Aus f riiherer 
Zeit'), and from Klaiber (' Holderlin, Hegel, und Schelling')." — 
Dr. E. Caird, Hegel, 1883. There is also a recent HegeVs Leben und 
Werke by a distinguished Hegelian, Dr. Kuno Fischer. 

English. — Practically the English reader will find all he needs 
in Dr. Caird's sketch. A few biographical gleanings of later date 
are given in the fifth introductory Essay to Dr. William Wallace's 
translation of the Philosophy of Mind, 1894, and in the earlier 
chapters of Dr. Baillie's HegeVs Logic, 1901. 

"The history of a philosopher is the history of his 
thought — the history of the origination of his system." 
These words of Rosenkranz's may remind us once more 
that we must not look for dramatic interest in the life 
of Hegel. In this chapter, however, we are concerned 
with external circumstances rather than with internal 
development; and, recluse as he was, Hegel lived 
through one of the most striking periods in history. 

George William Frederick Hegel was born at Stutt- 
gart on the 27th of August 1770. In that old world, 
5 



66 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

before the cataclysm of the French Revolution, Wiirt- 
temburg, of which Stuttgart is the capital city, was 
not yet a kingdom but a grand duchy. Hegel's family 
had settled in the little State during the seventeenth 
century, fleeing from Austrian persecution of the Pro- 
testants in Carinthia — that remote region of which 
Goldsmith's Traveller brought up so evil a report. 1 
Practically the Hegels were now Swabians by genera- 
tions of residence and by numerous marriages. Like 
other geographical expressions which run back into 
the Middle Ages, the name Swabia is an uncertain 
magnitude; but we may roughly define it as equivalent 
to South- Western Germany, along with what are 
now the German cantons of Switzerland. It is mainly 
Protestant in confession ; and there is a certain Swabian 
national or racial consciousness which may be com- 
pared with the singular national unity of Scotsmen, 
with whom, indeed, as Dr. Caird tells us, Seeley has 
compared the Swabians in respect to the contents of 
their character. Schiller the poet, Schelling the philo- 
sophical precursor of Hegel, Schwegler the theologian, 
his disciple in philosophy, were all Swabians, and 
indeed all Wurttemburgers. 

The father, of Hegel, like many of his ancestors, 
served in the humbler ranks of government employ- 
ment. His mother died when he was only twelve, 
but he held her in tender recollection, and, like not a 
few great men, seems to have inherited his higher 
qualities rather from the mother than the father. 

1 "Onward where the rude Carinthian boor 

Against the houseless stranger shuts the door." 
Quoted repeatedly in Gilbert and Churchill's classical book on The 
Dolomite Mountains. 



HEGEL'S LIFE AND WRITINGS 67 

He had one brother and one sister. Hegel's was a 
mind of slow development. At school he enjoyed a 
reputation for diligence rather than for brilliancy, 
though he was already drawn as few boys are to Greek 
poetry. He worked hard, extracting and epitomising 
all he read, and even translating twice over the 
Antigone. If genius is not " a faculty for taking 
pains," genius is very generally associated with that 
faculty, and the great writer like Carlyle, or the great 
thinker like Hegel, lays the foundation for his future 
career by patiently acquiring knowledge. Afterwards, 
if he is really great, he shows that he can wield and 
master the knowledge he has gained. 

When he was eighteen years old, Hegel went to the 
beautiful quaint little town of Tubingen, the seat of 
the university of his State. It lies among hills clothed 
with vineyards and hop gardens ; above these rise the 
upland pastures and woods of the Rauhe Alp ; while 
the Neckar flows swiftly past to Stuttgart, only some 
twenty miles off by direct road. Hegel was destined 
for the Christian ministry, and entered the " Stift," 
then as now lodged in an old Augustinian monastery, 1 
and then characterised by " a certain show of monastic 
discipline," including " a somewhat petty system of 
punishments, generally by deprivation of the portion 
of wine at dinner." It is on record that the young 
Hegel preached on Isa. lxi. 6, 7 ; on Matt. v. 1-16 ; and 
on the virtue of Placability ; always " very rational - 
isticaily." In the old days of Lutheran orthodoxy, 
Tubingen and Giessen had fought the battle of Krupsis 

1 The arrangement by which the university includes a Roman 
Catholic as well as a Protestant Faculty of Theology is more recent 
than Hegel's time. 



6S HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

or Kenosis (as then understood) in the Person of 
Christ. The theology and polemics of Tubingen were 
to become more widely known within a few decades, 
when disciples of Hegel carried their master's thought 
to unexpected issues, or gave more unreserved utter- 
ance to its suggestions. It was as a Tubingen lec- 
turer that Strauss published his first Life of Jesus; 
while the leaders of the Tubingen School in N. T. 
criticism — Baur, Schwegler, Zeller — were all disciples 
of the Hegelian philosophy. The Lemfreiheit of a 
German student was of little service to Hegel. He 
made all his university studies at Tubingen. Probably 
his poverty compelled him thankfully to accept a 
sizar-like existence, with all its inconveniences, in 
order to make sure of a liberal education. He really 
owed more to his own exertions than to the lecturers, 
who were scarcely touched by the letter of Kant, the 
great revolutionary of the hour in thought, and not at 
all moved by his deeper spirit. It is amusing to be told 
that, on Hegel's departure in 1793, the authorities of 
the Stift certified him as moderately well equipped in 
theology and philology, but practically unacquainted 
with philosophy. In reality he had been a diligent 
student of Kant and Rousseau. We are further told 
that Hegel was among the most violently revolutionary 
of the students in his political sympathies. Schelling, 
younger but more precocious than Hegel, belonged to 
the same group, and showed the same spirit. The date 
reminds us that revolution was then not simply in the 
air, but reigning or raging in "its sacred seat of" 
Paris. Several of Hegel's writings seem to betray the 
indelible impression produced by the Terror upon its 
young contemporary. 



HEGEL'S LIFE AND WRITINGS 6g 

The next six years were spent by Hegel as a private 
tutor, first at Berne, and later at Frankfort-on-the- 
Main. He continued to work upon his own lines. 
Extracts from the papers he wrote for himself in the 
Berne years are printed in Rosenkranz's Life, and 
summarised by Dr. Caircl. To a certain extent these 
reveal to us a Hegel who is still at the point of view of 
that eighteenth century rationalism with which he had 
been indoctrinated during boyhood and youth. He is 
occupied with the problem of Christianity; but he 
contrasts the Jewish world very unfavourably with 
Greece, and is disposed to write down even Jesus 
Christ as a " beautiful soul," who evaded rather than 
solved the problems of life. Not a little of this same 
attitude seems to survive in the views of the mature 
Hegel, as given in the Philosophy of Right. For, 
while the State is almost deified as the highest work of 
reason, organised in living detail, the Church is dismissed 
with a species of contempt, as an agency which teaches 
men to value the unity of all things, but cannot show 
them how to embody the principle of unity or apply 
it to facts. But, during the Berne days, even the 
Greek idea of Fate seemed to Hegel to stand higher than 
Judaism, with its hard and external law, or even than 
Christianity with its tragic brokenness. He was already, 
however, working his way to the positions which were 
characteristic of his after-teaching. This aims at being 
a synthesis of lessons learned, on the one hand, from 
Greek literature and philosophy; on the other hand, from 
the Gospels. Christianity comes to be placed higher 
than the somewhat superficial beauty and short-lived 
reasonableness of Greek life. But Christianity is re- 
garded as the same in kind. The Reason which flashed 



70 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

upon mankind from Athens shines upon them more 
steadily out of Galilee. It has learned a deeper truth. 
It makes room for 

j^yw " each rebuff, 

That stings earth's smoothness rough, 
Each j^>y that bids nor sit nor stand but go " ; 

and thus it attains to a fuller and richer unity. Thus 
it reaches a position which is believed to be invulner- 
able to the assaults of doubt. The intellectual essence 
of Christianity is believed to contain an advance upon 
Greek philosophy, needing only to be extricated and 
stated in terms of thought. Or, as Dr. Caird alter- 
natively expresses it, Hegel's maturer system unifies 
the ideas of Freedom and of Organic System. It sees 
them to be, on a close enough analysis, mutually involved, 
if we might not even say that it finds them to be phases 
of one truth. Thus, without yielding himself to re- 
action, or to a simple-minded orthodoxy, Hegel believes 
he has discovered a Reason broader and more profound 
than that of eighteenth century rationalism — a Reason ' 
rising above the one-sidedness of Rousseau or even of 
Kant — vindicating the individual, with the aspirations 
of his conscience, but subordinating him to the great 
Reason of humanity, and to those moral institutions 
in which goodness is a realised and living fact. 

It was not as a religious teacher but as a philosopher 
that Hegel ultimately felt himself called to serve his 
age. He had now completed his studies. He had 
waited in silence — unlike Schelling — until he had 
ripened. Henceforth he could speak boldly and show 
himself a hard fighter, confident of his thoughts. 
Hereafter he does not materially change ; perhaps we 
may say that hereafter his thought does not grow. A 



HEGEL'S LIFE AND WRITINGS 71 

sketch of a system which dates from his Frankfort 
period includes three parts : 1st, a Logic and a Meta- 
physic ("not yet, however, completely identified by 
Hegel as they were at a later period ") ; 2nd, a Philo- 
sophy of Nature ; 3rd (" not worked out in the Frank- 
fort sketch "), a Philosophy of Spirit. One was hardly 
prepared to find the Philosophy of Nature so firmly 
outlined at this early time. Judging from Hegel's first 
great book, the Phenomenology of Spirit — whose 
thoughts, phrases, bon-mots x turn up again and again in 
later writings — we should have thought he did not 
continuously believe in the Philosophy of Nature. The 
Phenomenology states a twofold division of philosophy : 
1st, Phenomenology, by way of introduction ; 2nd, 
Logic, as a systematic exposition; and it adopts a 
bantering not to say jeering tone towards the weak- 
nesses of Philosophy of Nature as found in Schelling. 

But this was at most a passing recoil. Hegel's first 
appearance in philosophy had been as a comrade and 
fellow-worker of Schelling, whose great achievement 
was to supplement Fichte's quasi Philosophy of Spirit 
with a view of the presence of reason in objective 
nature. Schelling, an old fellow-student and cor- 
respondent, was the man to whom Hegel turned in 
1799, when, on his father's death, he found himself set 
free for a time from the drudgery of tutorial work by 
a legacy of £300. Schelling was now at Jena, and 
Hegel thought that, after a short probationary resi- 
dence in a Roman Catholic city like Bamberg, where 
he could study Roman Catholicism and plan out his 
future, he might join his friend, fight his battles, and 

1 E.g. Hero and valet; "the fear of the Lord the beginning" ; "the 
feet of them which . . . shall carry thee out," etc. 



72 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

share his career. He was induced to waive the curious 
condition of a preliminary stay elsewhere, and in 
January 1801 came to Jena, revealing himself at once 
in several minor publications as a colleague and ally of 
Schelling. In 1802 they began jointly the issue of a 
" Critical Journal " of Philosophy, and in 1803 Schelling 
left Jena. This made it easier for the " little rift " which 
separated the thoughts of the two friends to widen into 
a visible breach. While Hegel agreed with Schelling 
as to the importance of asserting unity in all things, 
and of asserting the presence of reason in nature no less 
than in mind, he was opposed to any reliance on feeling, 
such as was more and more emphasised in Schelling's 
later thought upon abstruse themes. Already Hegel 
was prepared with his appeal to the " logical " principle 
of "the Notion." Schelling had never formulated his 
view of Reason in any such abstract or definite terms. 

Jena is the university town of the little State of 
Saxe- Weimar. Successive Electors of Saxony, men of 
noble character, were the foremost of all the cham- 
pions and protectors of the Protestant Reformation; 
and the University of Jena is a Protestant foundation, 
planned originally in the interests of a peculiarly 
rigorous Lutheran orthodoxy. One might have ex- 
pected that the territory of such rulers would grow 
into a great Protestant State. But the family custom 
of dividing and subdividing the dominions among 
different heirs was fatal to any such hope. Prussia, 
not Saxony, holds that proud position. There is 
indeed a kingdom of Saxony which dates its royal 
rank from the Napoleonic period. But it stands third, 
not first, among the States of the new German empire ; 
and the Dresden royal family have for generations 



HEGEL'S LIFE AND WRITINGS 73 

been Roman Catholics, though they have continued to 
prove themselves acceptable rulers to their Protestant 
subjects. Elsewhere Saxony survives in fragmentary 
little States, like Saxe- Weimar or the neighbouring 
State, interesting to all good Britons, of Saxe-Coburg- 
Gotha. 

Jena lies in a picturesque valley, faced with sharp- 
cut hills, which sink beyond into tableland in every 
direction. It is about fourteen miles from Weimar, 
the little capital, radiant in Hegel's time with the 
glories of Goethe and Schiller — with whom the philo- 
sopher enjoyed a somewhat distant intimacy — and 
interesting more recently as the home of Liszt's later 
years. Jena, indeed, is a beautiful place on the out- 
skirts of a still more beautiful region. If Wiirttemburg 
and neighbouring lands belong to mediaeval Swabia, 
Jena lies either within or close to the borders of 
mediaeval Thuringia, and memories of Luther and 
Goethe succeed each other curiously throughout the 
whole region. Jena itself is best known in history by its 
disastrous battle. The townspeople to-day are rather 
proud than ashamed of it, though Saxony and Saxe- 
Weimar shared with Prussia that calamitous shipwreck. 
After all, since 1871, German sensitiveness has had no 
reason to shrink from any of " the glories of France." 
Apparently the aim of the day's movements was to 
obtain a dominating position on the high ground. The 
Prussian commanders had allowed the highest points 
of all to be surprised and captured ; the armies, French 
and Prussian, struggled up in detachments by different 
lateral valleys to the tableland, and Napoleon hurled 
his enemies down again in confused ruin. Thereafter 
Prussia lay at his feet. 



74 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

Hegel's position had improved in the intervening 
years. 1803 saw him a Privat docent, 1805 a Professor 
extraordinarius in the university ; and in the year of 
Jena, 1807, Hegel was occupied in giving to the world 
the first of his major works, the Phenomenology. 
Even at the present day there is little centralisation 
and much Particularismus in the publication of Ger- 
man books. It need not much surprise us, therefore, to 
find that in 1807 the Phenomenology was issued to 
the world by a publisher doing business at Bamberg 
and Wurzburg. Hegel was South German born, and 
these Bavarian towns, besides being nearer his native 
regions, were farther off from the disturbances of the 
campaign against Prussia. The book has been de- 
scribed as a philosophical Pilgrim's Progress. Hegel 
himself called it his voyage of discovery. Its appear- 
ance must have been a painful event to Schelling, who, 
in spite of old friendship and personal services, is 
treated with about as much respect as the showman's 
Punch manifests to his victims. Henceforth the 
friends of Jena days were in a state of open enmity. 
L/The Phenomenology tries to prove that, by a necessary 
progress, thought or consciousness, regarded as the 
activity of a thinker [this in contrast to the starting- 
point of the Logic], undergoes successive transforma- 
tions until it reaches the level of absolute thought, 
where thought and the object of thought are adequate 
to each other in lucid identity or equivalence. On the 
way to this goal every possible phase of human 
thought is reviewed in turn, and put upon record. 1 
Thus the Phenomenology contains all of Hegel's think- 
ing on philosophical subjects, and expresses it with a 
1 See farther on, note A, at end of Chapter XI. 



HEGEL'S LIFE AND WRITINGS 75 

certain amount of youthful vivacity, though with a 
tantalising amou nt of n obscu rity. Dr. Hutchison Stir- 
ling~speaks truly when he describes it as uniquely 
difficult even among Hegel's writings. Once — at the 
end of the Jena period — it was delivered as class 
lectures. 

Hegel felt no special grief at the defeat of Jena. 
Wurttemburg, his native land in the narrower sense, 
had fought on Napoleon's side at Austerlitz ; Bavaria 
also, where he settled for a time, had enlarged its 
borders and sprung into the rank of royalties by the 
favour of the conqueror, who followed with success the 
traditional French policy of playing off the minor 
German States against Austria and Prussia. Even 
Electoral Saxony soon made peace with Napoleon, 
passed into his Rhenish confederacy, and secured the 
royal title by its subservience. 1 Nor had Prussia as 
yet done anything to attract to itself the hopes of 
German patriots. She had weakly lent herself for a 
time to Napoleon's plans, then at an ill-chosen moment 
had rushed upon her fate. Actuated partly by his 
early enthusiasm for the cause of liberty in France, 
partly by his lifelong attachment to tlie teaching of 
facts, Hegel like Goethe was disposed to acclaim rather 
tEarf to 'denounce the tyrant, who now wielded all 
the extraordinary powers which the French Revolu- 
tion had summoned into life. A letter tells of the 
emotion with which he saw Napoleon at Jena (which 
was occupied by the French before the battle) ; the 
world's master, that little figure on horseback ! But 

1 The smaller Saxon State of Weimar had perforce to comply equally 
with Napoleon's wishes. There were many Germans in the Grand Army 
which Napoleon led to destruction in Russia. 



76 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

facts proved themselves too strong for Hegel's comfort. 
He had to withdraw from Jena, his career suspended 
if not destroyed, and was thankful to find work 
temporarily as newspaper editor and bookseller at 
Bamberg. The task was not a very lofty one ; 
Napoleon permitted no leading articles. In a year's 
time Hegel obtained a somewhat better position, when 
he was appointed headmaster of the Gymnasium at 
Nuremberg. Formerly a Free City of the Empire and 
a centre of Reformation zeal in the days of Albrecht 
Diirer and Hans Sachs, Nuremberg had joined the 
Rhenish confederation in 1802, and was annexed a few 
years later to Bavaria. Hegel's ideal at this period 
was the revival of the Empire; but in the issue that 
task fell in a different form and very much later to 
Prussia, not to Austria ; while the Holy Roman Empire, 
having become "neither holy nor Roman nor an 
Empire," was dissolved, the Hapsburg dynasty annex- 
ing the Imperial title as a family possession, and so 
constituting the first " empire " of the modern upstart 
variety, while Bavaria and other of the minor German 
States were aggrandised by some fragmentary spoils. 
Bavaria above all had long traditions of selfish profit 
by alliance with France against other German powers ; 
but it made a more honourable choice in 1870. 

Even in a school, Hegel, though he did his work 
faithfully, was out of place. His superiors in a spirit 
of reform insisted on the teaching of philosophy by the 
Rector ; and Dr. Caird confesses that his school-book 
on the subject "must have greatly puzzled the clever 
boys of Nuremberg." In 1811 he married a lady of 
family belonging to the city ; the distinction between 
bourgeoisie and noble blood is of course more marked 



HEGEL'S LIFE AND WRITINGS 77 

in Germany than in Great Britain. Twice at least in 
his courtship Hegel broke into verses. Two sons were 
born of the marriage; one became well known as a 
Professor of History, the other as a politician. And 
at Nuremberg in 1812-16 Hegel produced his most 
elaborate and finished work, the [greater] " Logic," 
described by Dr. Caird as " with all its defects, the one 
work which the modern world has to put beside the 
Metaphysics of Aristotle." In 1816, as the third and 
last volume of the Logic passed through the press, 
Hegel received three offers of philosophical chairs — 
from Erlangen, from Heidelberg, and — with a certain 
degree of hesitation — from Berlin, the scene of his 
later labours. For the present he accepted the call 
to Heidelberg, another beautiful and romantic city, 
perhaps the fairest that Germany can boast. Its steep 
hills are clothed with forests ; the Neckar, with wood 
rafts from Tubingen and Stuttgart, flowing past to join 
the neighbouring Rhine. Heidelberg was the home 
of an unhappy English or rather Scottish princess, 
mother of the Prince Rupert of our Civil Wars. Her 
husband, an unsuccessful champion of Protestantism on 
the field of battle, lost his own dominions while seeking 
to make good his election to the crown of Bohemia ; 
and most of the Palatinate then passed to the Roman 
Catholic power of Baden. It might seem irrelevant to 
dwell on the beauty of several of Hegel's homes. 
When he was looking for a Roman Catholic city to 
spend a short time in, we are told that he stipulated 
for pleasant society and ein gutes Bier ; but we hear 
nothing about scenery. In his ^Esthetics, art is pre- 
dominant and natural beauty is described as inferior. 
The " starry heavens above " offended him from their 



78 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

lack of pattern ; and the Swiss Alps left him unmoved, 
though he rejoiced in waterfalls — could it be as a 
material parable of the " fluidity " of the Notion, with 
their changlessness in constant change ? But Heidel- 
berg overcame the stolidity even of Hegel. He was 
delighted with it, and told his wife that she would 
learn at Heidelberg for the first time what the pleasures 
of walking were. It had other attractions from the 
presence of friends or fellow-workers. Even in the 
Jena period, Hegel had cast wistful glances at Heidel- 
berg. His well-known phrase, according to which 
he desired to make philosophy " speak German," was 
employed at that time in a letter bringing his claims 
under the notice of a high official in the State of Baden 
— an application which at least in the first instance 
produced no effect. 

Restored to the more congenial work of a philo- 
sophical professorship, Hegel rose steadily in esteem' 
during his short stay at Heidelberg. Here for the 
first time he lectured on ^Esthetics; and here the 
first and shortest but in some respects the best sketch 
of his Encyclopcedia took shape (the [lesser] " Logic " — 
the Philosophy of Nature — the Philosophy of Spirit). 
This was contributed to a collection of encyclopaedias ; 
whimsically enough, since it is scarcely possible that 
any one philosophical system should be of such 
general acceptance as to merit a place among the 
positive sciences. Henceforward Hegel frequently 
made use of his Encyclopaedia as a basis for lectures — 
either (one presumes) dictating it, or referring to it in 
lieu of dictated paragraphs. Two other publications of 
this short but fertile period are mentioned by Dr. 
Caird. They were both contributed to the Heidelberg 



HEGEI 



Jahrbucher. 
extreme cr 
assailed 
fern" 

f 



NISM 



-^ic and social 

hy political 

'on, and 

"the 



HEGEL'S LIFE AND WRITINGS 81 

precedent ?]. So limited were the sympathies of Hegel as 
a politician during later life. As a teacher, however, he 
rose and rose. It was believed that the problem of ages 
had been finally solved ; men were afraid to differ from 
the great master, who dealt such heavy blows ; and his 
influence was very great. His birthday nearly coincid- 
ing with that of Goethe — whose theory of colour, by the 
way, Hegel obstinately championed against Newton's — 
the two great men were celebrated together on several 
occasions. With Schleiermacher, a colleague at Berlin, 
he was on the stiffest terms. On one occasion they 
openly quarrelled at de Wette's table. Rosenkranz 
rather needlessly defends Hegel from the imputation 
of merely personal jealousy of Schleiermacher. The 
whole cast of his thinking made it inevitable that he 
should regard Schleiermacher's reliance upon feeling 
with extreme aversion ; and whatever we think of the 
delicacy or courtesy of the expression, he was only true 
to his own position when he launched the sneer that, 
according to Schleiermacher's view of religion, the dog 
must be the pattern of devoutness. 

The chief literary work of this period is the Philo- 
sophy of Bight There are also, besides Review articles, 
two more editions of the Encyclopcedia, the last " with 
considerable alterations," and a new edition of the 
[greater] Logic, which Hegel did not live to complete. 
In later years he visited on holiday journeys the 
Netherlands, Vienna, Bohemia, and Paris. Victor 
Cousin, who afterwards criticised him and compared 
him unfavourably with Schelling, was in some mea- 
sure his host at Paris, and was supposed to be popu- 
larising his views in France. Hegel, however, never 
crossed the Channel or the Alps. His death came 
6 



82 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

suddenly by cholera on November 14th, 1831 — the 
anniversary of the death of Leibniz. 

His writings, embodied in a monumental edition by 
admiring friends after his death, are of different classes. 
First of all there are finished books — the Pheno- 
menology and the greater Logic. The former has not 
been published in any English version, nor is likely to 
be ; portions of the latter are rendered and commented 
upon in Dr. H. Stirling's very strong and very strange 
book, the Secret of Hegel. To a second class may be 
assigned the books published in outline by Hegel — 
the Encyclopaedia, the Philosophy of Right. These, 
when incorporated in the definitive edition, were ex- 
panded by the help of additions partly taken from the 
Professor's " Hefts " of various years, and partly from 
students' notes. Translators have hesitated how to 
deal with these additions. Dr. William Wallace, in 
translating the lesser Logic, gave everything, but in 
translating the Philosophy of Mind [he renders "Geist" 
by " mind," not " spirit "] he gave only the paragraphs. 1 
We should add that the remaining and central third of 
the Encyclopaedia, the Philosophy of Nature, is even 
less likely than the Phenomenology to find an English 
translator. Its science is out of date, and its philosophy 
is deprecatingly defended to-day by Hegel's warmest 
admirers. Dr. Dyde's translation of the Philosophy of 
Right includes everything, but carefully distinguishes 
three different degrees of authority or importance in 
the material which he uses. Finally, as a third class 
we have the Lectures published after Hegel's death 
— Philosophy of Religion, ^Esthetics, Philosophy of 
History, History of Philosophy. All these have more 

1 The translator's prolegomena to this volume are somewhat copious. 



HEGEL'S LIFE AND WRITINGS 83 

or less found translators. It will be noticed that, 
according to Hegel's classification, they all belong to 
one part or another of the Philosophy of Spirit — the 
branch of philosophy for the sake of which Hegel did 
all his work. To a certain extent we must consider 
these remains as less authoritative, since Hegel had 
not prepared any part of them for a reader's eye ; yet 
substantially they are of equal value with those books 
in which, along with Hegel's very words, we have 
additions from students' notes. The remaining treatises 
are of less consequence. 

The death of Hegel did not imply the immediate 
loss of hegemony by his system, but the fall when it 
took place was decisive. First, the Hegelianism of the 
Left brought discredit on the whole, and the school was 
rent with fierce antagonisms. Idealism turned into 
Materialism ; and the Defender of the Faith (in his own 
sense) became known as the father or forefather of 
dogmatic atheisms. And secondly, within a few years 
Hegelianism became as completely unfashionable in 
Germany as it had formerly been the vogue. A com- 
petent if somewhat exoteric reporter, the late Professor 
Max Mtiller, has recently told us in his Autobiography 
of the startling change. Hegel might seem to have 
prepared us for some such overthrow. In the Pheno- 
menology he tells us that the break up of a victorious 
party is a proof of the completeness of its triumph. It 
occupies the whole field ; both the alternative views, 
with which the future has to deal, proceed from within 
itself. This surely is one more proof of the invincible 
optimism of the school. What Hegel says may be 
true in some cases; but in other cases, much less 



84 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

flattering reasons may cause a party to fall to pieces. 
It may not be undue strength that divides it, but 
weakness. It may not be young life we are witnessing, 
as it sends out new swarms to occupy fresh territory, 
but break-down, failure, disease. Dr. Caird, true to 
Hegel's optimism, quotes the words of Hegel as pro- 
phetic of the history of his school. That is correct, if 
Hegel has taught the modern world all that he had 
to teach, and if philosophical thought since his time 
has built upon his foundation, or advanced from the 
basis he established to new issues and further triumphs. 
Who will dare to say that this has been the case ? If 
most of the philosophy of modern Germany belongs to 
a stadium antecedent to Kant and Hegel, great part of 
the responsibility for the relapse must be attributed to 
the omniscient airs of the younger master. "The 
Notion" did not long hold the field. Men had sup- 
posed that Hegel grasped in his hands the solution to 
every problem — they came to believe that he had done 
nothing, and threw themselves once again into the 
arms of empiricism. Speculative thought, banished 
from Germany, found a home — as Professor Ormond has 
pointed out — in Great Britain or in America. A large 
body of our thinkers have tried to "do over again " 
what Hegel's immediate pupils believed to have been 
done once for all. A substitute for " the Notion " has 
been offered us in a new reading of the significance of 
Kant's thought. Our historical survey is not complete 
till we have chronicled the leading stages in this 
revived Hegelianism, trying to mark its modifications 
and to estimate their value. 



! 



CHAPTER VI 

British Hegelianism — Earlier Phases 

Literature. — " To English readers Hegel was first introduced 
in the powerful statement of his principles by Dr. Hutchison 
Stirling. Mr. Wallace, in the introduction to his translation of 
the lesser Logic, and Mr. Harris, the editor of the American 
"Speculative Journal," have since done much to illustrate various 
aspects of the Hegelian philosophy. Other English writers, such 
as the late Professor Green, Mr. Bradley, Professor Watson, and 
Professor Adamson, who have not directly treated of Hegel, have 
been greatly influenced by him. Mr. [Andrew] Seth [Professor 
Pringle-Pattison] has recently written an interesting account of 
the movement from Kant to Hegel." — Dr. E. Caird, Hegel, Pref., 
p. vi (1883). 

In speaking of a Hegelian revival in our country, 1 we 
may seem to be disregarding protests, made by several 
of those named above, against expressions which identify 
them with any one great name in the past. The 
frankest admission of discipleship is probably that 
contained in the preface to Dr. John Caird's Intro- 
duction to the Philosophy of Religion : " The author 
desires to express his obligations to the following 
books . . . above all, Hegel's Philosophie der Religion, 

1 The author regrets that limits both of space and knowledge keep 

him from giving any account of the interesting work done in America in 

connexion with the Hegelian movement. 

85 



86 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

a work to which he has been more largely indebted 
than to any other book." Dr. E. Caird tells us, on the 
other hand {Hegel, 1883), that " the day of discipleship 
is over " ; and, more plainly, that Hegel failed to speak 
openly enough regarding the modifications in the 
theology of the Christian Church which his philosophy 
involves. Beyond that difference, however — and, as 
Dr. Caird himself conceives it, it is far from being a 
difference in principle — it does not appear w T hat, if 
anything, in Hegel Dr. E. Caird will permit us to 
regard as obsolete. How then can we describe a move- 
ment inspired with reverence and enthusiasm for 
Hegel, unless we call it after the writer who is its 
fountainhead ? A well-chosen class name is the first 
step to knowledge. It is not the whole of knowledge : 
and we fall into a too common error if we allow our- 
selves to treat mere knowledge of names as a knowledge 
of things. The right name is only a beginning, but it 
places us on the track which leads to further insight. 
And, while we disclaim the idea of imputing to Hegel's 
British advocates full technical discipleship, we feel 
that any other phraseology would mislead our readers 
more seriously than the usual terminology can do. 
We therefore continue to make use of the expression 
British Hegelianism. 

An alternative name is offered for our acceptance, 
when we are asked to speak of a British Neo-Kantian 
movement. 1 That epithet, as we shall see, points to a 
fact of great importance — the close connexion which 
English and Scottish thought has instituted between 

1 So in Dr. E. Caird's preface to Essays in Philosophical Criticism 
(see below, p. 114), in Professor A. Seth's Hegelianism and Personality, 
and in Mr. Fairbrother's Philosophy of T. H. Green. 



BRITISH HEGELIANISM 87 

" Hegelian " conclusions and the Kantian premises or 
point of view. But if we may propose so humble a 
test as the nature of beliefs or conclusions reached, the 
British " Neo-Kantians " — with the very doubtful ex- 
ception of T. H. Green — agree with Hegel much more 
than they do with Kant. Moreover, in Germany, Neo- 
Kantianism is the name of a movement back from 
Hegel to the older master. Theologians who take their 
stand upon Neo-Kantian grounds — the school of Ritschl 
contribute most but by no means all of these — exhibit 
even an exaggerated distrust of Hegel, while the philo- 
sophical wing have reduced Kant to a species of empiri- 
cist agnosticism. However unfair we may think such 
a way of handling Kant, the German Neo-Kantians have 
acquired by pre-emption a right to explain their own 
name in their own sense, and it will create much 
confusion if we attach the same label to a very differ- 
ent movement of thought in our country. 1 Never- 
theless, it is most true and noteworthy that British 
Hegelianism is, in a sense of its own, Neo-Kantian. 

The only other preliminary remark we need make 
is, that British Hegelianism is not a statical thing, but 
a living movement of thought, and that several of its 
representatives exhibit a transformation, almost a dis- 
solution, of their original Hegelian doctrines. This is 
particularly the case with one of the strongest, Mr. F. H. 
Bradley. Mr. Bradley has long protested against the 
assertion that a Hegelian " school " exists among us. In 
the sense now explained, it does exist, and Mr. Bradley 
used to be one of its champions ; 2 but he is ceasing, if he 

1 There is also a Neo-Kantian movement in France, of which we may 
at least affirm that it is not Hegelian. 

2 Ethical Studies expounds ideas learned from "two or three" great 



88 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

has not entirely ceased, to stand within its limits ; while 
he is of great interest as exhibiting a further development 
of thought on the fundamental questions of metaphysics. 

In early days, when our insular philosophy was 
much more inclined to denounce Hegel than to study 
him, Professor Ferrier (as Dr. Hutchison Stirling 
points out) learned to sympathise at least in part with 
the sphinx of Berlin. Ferrier's own philosophy may 
be regarded as a sort of portal to a system of con- 
structive idealism. Upon epistemology , the theory of 
knowledge, and agnoiology, the theory of ignorance, is 
reared the fabric of ontology. The most idealist 
portion is the agnoiology, which argues that we can 
only be termed ignorant of what it would be possible 
for us to know, — hence, that the fundamental assump- 
tion of idealism is justified, and that we must take for 
granted, in all our thinking, the trustworthiness of 
thought and the rationality of the real. Ferrier's 
ontology leaves us with subject plus object as the 
ultimate or minimum definition of reality. This 
sounds like an absolutely paradoxical dualism — as if 
one were to say, " The simplest conceivable element of 
articular sound, to be reached by analysis, is of the 
type C D " — where the very form of statement cries out 
for the simpler elements C and D. Yet Professor 
Andrew Seth 1 [Professor Pringle Pattison] appeals to 
the reasonableness of Ferrier from the alleged unreason- 
German writers. There are quotations from Kant, Hegel, Vatke (a 
Hegelian theologian), and to a much less degree from Trendelenburg. 
In Ethical Studies, therefore, Mr. Bradley exhibited the very central 
characteristics of British Hegelianism. 

1 In Hegelianism and Personality, pp. 33, 34. 



BRITISH HEGELIANISM 89 

ableness of Hegel. To Ferrier also we owe the first dis- 
cussion of epistemology in English, and apparently the 
framing of the word. 1 Word and conception play a great 
part in the more recent thinking of Professor Seth. 

Another British thinker, of much practical import- 
ance, upon whom Hegel left his mark, was the late 
Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol College, Oxford. 
When Jowett's statements regarding Hegel first 
appeared — in his introduction to the translation of the 
Sophist, 2nd edit., 1875 — the work of writers of the 
British Hegelian school had already done something 
towards familiarising English readers with the subject. 
Chronologically, however, Jowett's studies antedated 
most of the British movement towards Hegel, if not 
the whole of that movement as conducted by professed 
philosophers. Jowett is therefore one of the pioneers 
in a dark and intricate region of knowledge. His 
biography has made still plainer how deep an im- 
pression was produced by Hegel's thoughts upon this 
very shrewd and reality-loving mind. Owing to his 
studies in Plato, Jowett sympathises with that element 
in Hegel which is forbidding to many readers, and 
especially to those whose bent is towards practical 
wisdom. "The unity of Being and Nothing" might 
have been expected to repel Jowett ; it did at least as 
much to attract him. When one first read his stric- 
tures, not very long after they had been made public, 
one was inclined — in one's hot young enthusiasm for the 
Hegelian philosophy — to regard Jowett as an outsider, 
That judgment is hardly confirmed on a reperusal of 
Jowett's remarks. Perhaps only one of his statements 
may be called distinctly erroneous — the statement that 

1 The great Oxford Dictionary quotes Ferrier for epistemology. 



go HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

the categories of the second division of the Logic, those 
of Essence, describe " the essence of things for thought." 
All categories do that. It is no distinctive peculiarity 
of the categories of Essence. They may be said to do 
that work of thought which Jowett speaks of more 
fully than the categories of Being ; but, on the other 
hand, " the Notion " in its varied forms outvies the cate- 
gories of Essence as a description of " the essence of 
things for thought." Categories are progressive de- 
finitions of the real, and every one in its turn goes 
deeper than its predecessors. Except for a certain 
inaccuracy on this point, it is difficult to complain 
of anything in Jowett's remarks on Hegel. He puts 
forward mainly such objections as one might have 
expected from a practical mind which had relapsed 
into its most doggedly practical mood. He is half- 
ashamed of having coquetted with shadowy ideas. He 
has retreated into his castle of common sense. His 
objections are not to be described as unimportant, but 
we may perhaps fairly call them the difficulties of the 
practical mind and not of the speculative thinker. All 
Jowett's difficulties and objections, taken in their full 
sum, are less significant than the fact that he had 
offered a tribute, however temporary and partial, at 
the shrine of Hegel. On matters of religion, it is true, 
his moral realism and sober devoutness, coupled with 
his rationalistic jealousy of a historical faith, would 
find a good deal to sympathise with in the German 
idealist. It is in regard to Greek thought, however, 
that he bears the most splendid testimony to Hegel. 
" He has done more to explain Greek thought than all 
other writers put together." 1 

1 Introduction to his translation of the Sophist, sub finem. 



BRITISH HEGELIANISM 91 

The great starting-point in our national study of 
Hegel is found in a memorable book by a Scottish 
writer, Dr. Hutchison Stirling, who in 1865 published 
the first edition of the Secret of Hegel. The book is 
not easy reading; indeed, a popular pleasantry made 
complaint that the secret, whatever it was, had been 
only too faithfully kept. Dr. Stirling thought it best 
to print the record of his own first tentative approaches 
to an understanding of the Master — a sort of " rise and 
progress of philosophy in the soul"; but the reader has 
to be on his guard against taking provisional state- 
ments as if they were definitive. Some of the earlier 
sections of Hegel's larger Logic are translated; the 
same portions are re-written in Dr. Stirling's own 
words, and expounded or commented on; and the 
views of other interpreters are examined. Throughout, 
as has been well said, we have " the thought of Hegel 
in the style of Carlyle." 1 

The first noticeable feature in Dr. Stirling's hand- 
ling of Hegel is the strongly positive or conservative 
attitude. He points to a Hegel not so much (in 
Fichte's phraseology) of " synthesis " or higher unity, 
as of reaction against the falsity of "antithesis." If 
one may say so, Hegel is read from the point of view 
of conservative reaction. He is made to stand for a 
principle like that of St. Simon's or Comte's " organic " 
periods of history, in contrast with those " critical " 
periods when Dr. Stirling's hated Awfklarung flourishes. 
Hegel is regarded as a big and brave brother, by whose 
help Faith and Duty may turn to flight all the armies 
of the aliens. Of course this in a sense is Hegel's 
own position and the position of every Hegelian. But 

1 Prof. Sorley, in noticing the second edition of the Secret (1897). 



92 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

there is another side to the question. Christianity and 
morality are to be justified from a philosophical point 
of view; certain modifications, perhaps even trans- 
formations, are implied. Dr. Stirling has never told 
us plainly how much alteration he conceives to be 
necessary. To be interested in the positive moral uses 
of philosophy is indeed creditable and more than 
creditable. To push that interest even into partisan- 
ship is a course of action to which Hegel himself has 
given some encouragement, for in later life he was 
willing to be regarded as the champion of all the 
orthodoxies. But if his system has any distinctive 
feature, we must not look for it on this side nor yet 
on that, but upon all sides. Hegel is all-inclusive. 
He is catholic to a fault ; and he might have considered 
his Edinburgh advocate and interpreter rather too 
" edifying." The real Hegel seems rather to " sit as 
God, holding no form of creed, But contemplating 
all " ; or, as one sometimes feels inclined to recast the 
quotation, " holding all forms of creed, and abrogating 
all." The formulae which lend themselves so readily 
to Ultramontanism sit awkwardly upon Hegel's de- 
tached and elusive wisdom. God, Freedom, Im- 
mortality — in technical language, the postulates of 
natural theology — are the truths for which Dr. 
Stirling pleads, and which — with some hesitation — 
he finds to be supported by Hegel. In a sense, too, 
he endorses Hegel's philosophical vindication of 
Christianity, or what Hegel offers as such. No other 
British Hegelian is so fully identified with the 
Hegelianism of the Right. 1 One more characteristic : 

1 Dr. Sterrett, an American writer on the Philosophy of Religion (see 
"literature" before Chap. XV.), goes at least as far in this direction. 



BRITISH HEGELIANISM 93 

Dr. Stirling has never absolutely affirmed that Hegel 
was successful in carrying out his grand scheme. 1 

Dr. Stirling has followed up his first book by many 
others. He is always forcible and suggestive, if he has 
never again reached quite so high a level. Logically 
(unless in critical comment ; see, e.g., his masterly little 
book on part of Sir William Hamilton's philosophy, or see 
again his attack on Darwinianism 2 ) his later writings 
have been even less closely knit than the Secret. But 
Dr. Stirling had very high claims upon all who could 
appreciate philosophical eminence, and we must regret 
that the father of British Hegelianism was never called 
to occupy one of the philosophical chairs in the Scottish 
universities. Apart from this, Dr. Stirling has received 
all the honours which Scotland can give ; and he has been 
a powerful agent in educating several generations of stu- 
dents of philosophy. Best of all, he has set the example 
of a life disinterestedly devoted to speculative thought. 

A second and still more important feature noticeable 
in Dr. Stirling in his affiliation of Hegel to Kant. The 
very table of contents prescribes the " elimination of 
Fichte and Schelling " ; and the " Secret of Hegel " par 
excellence consists of the following words — 

Quality — Time and Space — Empirical Realities, 

While repudiating the kind of jus divinum claimed by other members of 
his communion, he finds a full guarantee for the Historic Episcopate in 
its historic actuality. The real is the rational, and whatever is is right. 
Precisely because it has been evolved, episcopacy is marked out as 
divinely planned. Dr. W. T. Harris also stands for the Hegelianism 
of the Right (see below). 

1 See especially Dr. Stirling's notes to his translation of Schwegler's 
History of Philosophy. 

2 Perhaps the Text-Book to Kant should also be named as a particularly 
solid and well-finished work. 



94 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

to which the author acids the very apposite comment, 1 
" This of coarse requires explanation " — going on to 
refer the reader to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. 
In the light of Dr. E. Caird's studies of Kant, we 
might fill out Dr. Stirling's scheme as follows : — " If it 
is credible that pure self -identical thought, under what- 
ever impulse, can give rise to so ' concrete ' a conception 
as that of quantity, there is no reason for attributing 
to any other source than pure thought the further so- 
called subjective conceptions or 'forms' of Time and 
Space, nor yet the existence of those Quanta in time 
and space of which we have experience, and which we 
regard as realities." Perhaps this statement goes be- 
yond what is contained in the Secret. To follow his 
own lines, we might interpret Dr. Stirling's hints more 
simply, as follows : — " Kant himself suggests to us that 
Time and Space, and even those realities of which we 
have experience in time and space, are simply modes 
of Quantity, which is a pure a priori human thought. 
The same thing will therefore be true of other thoughts. 
They also will crave embodiment. Nature or reality 
in general, if we look at it hard enough, will turn out 
to be nothing else than thought. And the great correc- 
tion which Hegel teaches us to make in Kant is that, 
instead of regarding this truth as one relating to 
human knowledge of phenomena, we ought to drop 
the illogical qualification, and affirm our position of 
[absolute] knowledge of reality." 2 In whichever way 
we take it, the passage plainly shows that Dr. Stirling 

1 I. pp. 125, 126. 

2 In the notes to SchwegUr, Dr. Stirling names as "the Secret of 
Hegel" the discovery of a "Triple Nexus" in thought, and the inter- 
pretation of all things by this threefold rhythm (p. 231). 



BRITISH HEGELIANISM 95 

formulated the programme for a great mass of the best 
British HegeliaD work — Hegel as the extricator and 
vindicator of deeper truths suggested by Kant, to which 
Kant's own insight was inadequate — Kant's list of 
categories the true historical introduction to the boldly 
soaring speculation of Hegel. 

Soon after the publication of the Secret of Hegel, 
another deep student and powerful teacher of Idealism 
appeared in Scotland, when the chair of Moral Philo- 
sophy in Glasgow University was filled (in 1866) by 
the appointment of Mr. Edward Caird, Fellow of Mer- 
ton College, Oxford. Best known at that time as the 
younger brother of Professor (afterwards Principal) 
John Caird, Dr. Edward Caird has lived to influence 
thought, and to enjoy public fame and personal grati- 
tude, quite as largely as his distinguished brother. 
Although strikingly reserved as a man, and as a teacher 
always conversational, never oratorical, he yet fascinated 
the most unwilling minds in his class-room, compelling 
them to practice and gradually teaching them to love 
the unwonted labour of thinking. In most cases he 
was so irresistible, that his pupils accepted all his con- 
clusions with scarcely a modification. He has done 
much by authorship as well as by academic teaching. 
His first considerable book, A Critical Account of the 
Philosophy of Kant, was published in 1877. It dealt 
with the Critique of Pure Reason, and was meant to 
be followed by a second volume ; but though it was 
very well received, the author's severe self-criticism 
led him to re- write it. A good deal of the original 
draft survives, amid important changes, in The Critical 
Philosophy of Kant, The two volumes of this work 



96 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

were published simultaneously in 1889, and give a 
very careful survey, from the "Hegelian" standpoint 
of constructive and positive idealism, over the whole 
field of Kant's writings. In his sketch of Hegel (1883 ; 
Philosophical Classics for English Readers) and in his 
Evolution of Religion (2 vols., 1893 ; Gifford Lectures 
in St. Andrew's University), Dr. Caird has spoken out 
more frankly regarding his personal beliefs in religion 
and theology. 1 By his appointment, on the death of 
Jowett, to the Mastership of Balliol College, a remark- 
able career reached a remarkable climax. 

Dr. Caird — whether he owed the hint to Dr. Stirling, 
or was working independently on parallel lines — may 
be said to have carried out with greater elaboration in 
detail, and with a greater degree of literary finish, the 
programme announced by Dr. Stirling — Kant the true 
foundation of Hegel, Hegel the true interpreter of 
Kant. If to that programme we add as additional 
materials Hegel's rapid sketch (in the introduction to 
the Encyclopaedia Logic) of Kant's successive treatises, 
it might seem that Dr. Caird had little more to do than 
fill in an outline drawn by others. But we must re- 
member that he had to transform Hegel's coldly hostile 
examination of Kant into a sympathetic eliciting of the 
hints of constructive idealism from behind the prejudices 
or hostile principles with which Kant was hampered. 
How well this work was done, every student knows. 
While we read, we are " under the spell of the magician." 
Difficulties vanish, and the demonstration seems com- 
plete. It is only when we close the book that difficulties 
begin to return. 

Perhaps the most distinctive feature in Dr. Caird's 

1 Gifford Lectures at Glasgow may shortly be expected in book form. 



BRITISH HEGELIANISM 97 

interpretation of Kant is his identification of Kant's 
" synthetic " with Hegel's " concrete." There is reason 
to believe that Hegel himself was not aware of the 
possibility of this identification ; for, when he uses the 
word synthetic, he uses it in a deprecatory or contemp- 
tuous sense, applying it to a sort of connexion which 
holds thoughts together with an external clamp — not 
fusing them, and not grafting one into the other. 1 It 
cannot be denied that Kant's usage offers some justi- 
fication for Hegel's ; yet at least we may consider it 
characteristic that here again Hegel takes the lower 
view of Kant's work — and takes it with a perfect 
natural unconsciousness, scarcely favourable to Dr. 
Stirling's accusation that Hegel intentionally hid the 
amount of his debt to Kant. In Kant, synthetic 
thought is an artificial or morbid though useful phase 
of mind ; to Hegel, as elucidated by Dr. Caird, analytic 
thought is worthless [or ; is a mere subordinate aspect 
of the detailed process of thought, and unreal in 
itself], while thought everywhere in its own nature 
is "concrete" [or many-sided; yet always also 
unified]. This possible line of connexion between 
Kant and Hegel is, we believe, Dr. Caird's peculiar 
discovery. 

But Dr. Caird's work is still more important to the 
British student as a way into Hegel's system. Hegel 
himself has no skill in making easy approaches to his 
thought. Both the Phenomenology and the later sub- 
stitute for it, the introduction to the Encyclopaedia 
Logic, bewilder rather than help the learner. If "a 

1 Perhaps the reader ought to be warned that neither of these material 
images [" Vorstellungen "] answers to the subtlety of Hegel's doctrine of 
thought. He requires a fuller unity and a more vital difference. 

7 



98 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

ladder has been let down to us," 1 we are not trained 
for such giddy ascents. Kant, on the contrary, stands 
squarely on experience, and we know where we are, or 
think we do, when we study Kant. Unfortunately, as 
we proceed under Dr. Caird's guidance from Kant's 
starting-point to Hegel's goal, we lose touch with the 
familiar world. Kant, Dr. Caird explains, shows that 
our thought constitutes reality ; there is no reason for 
saying, with Kant, phenomenal reality ; but an in- 
dividual thought could not constitute objective reality ; 
therefore we must take Kant to mean that thought as 
such constitutes absolute reality. The starting-point 
is therefore transformed or is knocked to pieces in the 
course of our further movements. That is quite in 
order, upon the principles of Hegelianism. But the 
appeal to Kant for a new way into Hegel was designed 
to help British minds too deeply immersed in common 
sense to be capable of receiving Hegel's Hegelianism. 
It is to be feared that the difficulties of the new road 
are almost as great as those of the old. 

Much of Dr. Caird's success in argument — perhaps 
of Hegel's too — is due to the skill with which he states 
his case and introduces his assumptions. He always 
takes for granted the idealist claim, that some form of 
abstract metaphysical statement may be relied on with 
unbounded confidence. He then argues that Hegel's 
manysidedness shines forth in manifest superiority 
over all onesidedness — Hegel's intense faith in unity 
over all dualism. If we are to criticise such arguments, 
or perhaps any skilfully constructed arguments, with 
success, we must criticise, not what is argued for, but 
rather what is taken for granted. Is a formula drawn 
1 Phenomenology, p. 20. 



BRITISH HEGELIANISM 99 

from logic or metaphysics adequate to determine the 
contents of morality and religion ? Are we always 
dealing with the relations of the universal to the 
particular, and of the Ego to the Non Ego ? Assuming 
that we are, Dr. Caird shows with great skill that the 
subtle manysidedness of the Hegelian scheme out- 
matches all its rivals. 

Slightly younger than Edward Caird, Thomas Hill 
Green was earlier on the field of letters with his very 
able and very difficult "Introduction" to Hume's 
Treatise of Human Nature (1874). At Oxford, where 
he spent his brief working life as tutor and pro- 
fessor, Green developed an influence which, while 
deeply intellectual, was still more profoundly personal 
and moral. He is the least Hegelian in tone or in 
character of all Hegelians, German or British. There 
was no shadow or suspicion of levity about Green's 
optimism. Whether from his peculiar development of 
the common thought, or from subtler qualities of nature 
and character — the choice between those alternatives 
is less a question of evidence than of interpretation — 
Green occupies a place by himself. We might say of 
him what Goethe said of the young Carlyle, that he 
was " an unusual moral force." If Hegel was a greater 
philosopher, Green was greater as a man. He served 
the Idea not merely in scholarly abstraction, but in the 
routine of the Oxford City Council and in the despised 
paths of temperance reform. " His heart the lowliest 
duties on itself did lay." His principal book was 
posthumous, bearing a title chosen by Green, Prolego- 
mena to Ethics. We shall rely mainly upon it, while 
referring also to republished articles and lectures, and 

LofC. 



ioo HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

to Mr. Fair-brother's useful, if sometimes disputable, 
summary. 1 

In Green the synthesis of Kant and Hegel almost 
becomes a return from Hegel upon Kant. Dr. E. Caird 
has told us that Green considered 2 Hegel's work must 
" all be done over again " ; and the late Professor Sidg- 
wick quotes similar remarks addressed in that (philo- 
sophically) less friendly quarter. 3 On the other hand, 
it is noticeable how little Green troubles himself with 
the opinions of the historical Kant. " Kant " and 
" Kantianism " on Green's pages do not stand for what 
Kant believed and held, but for what he ought to have 
believed. They stand for a " Hegelianised " Kant — a 
Kant of constructive idealism. Moreover, the Prolego- 
mena to Ethics constitutes the first and as yet the only 
systematic enunciation of the idealism of the English 
revival. We cannot tell how far Green's positions are 
to be imputed in detail to others ; but they are signi- 
ficant as the results reached by a great mind placed in 
the full stream of the movement. 

The Prolegomena to Ethics begins with a "Meta- 
physics of Knowledge " ; and this recalls us at once to 
Hegelian first principles. The systematic unity of all 
things, grasped in thought, was placed first in our own 
preliminary analysis of Hegel ; an intellectual issue 
like Hegel's suggests itself even in Green, when appeal 
is made for a basis of ethics to a metaphysics of know- 



1 A popular sketch of Green's religious position, along with a striking 
picture of the grief caused by "Mr. Gray's" death, is found in Mrs. H. 
Ward's novel, Robert Elsmere. 

2 Preface to Essays in Philosophical Criticism, p. v. 

3 He had said (in talk), " I looked into Hegel the other day, and found 
it a strange Wirrwarr"—Mind for 1900, p. 19. 



BRITISH HEGELIANISM 101 

ledge. The guarantee, however, is not Hegel's. Green 
does not quote the " logical " Notion, but appeals to 
Kant's analysis of self-consciousness in the Critique of 
Pure Reason, interpreting the Kantian analysis of 
course not sceptically, but positively and constructively. 
Experience would not be possible except the unity of 
consciousness held together the manifold. The world 
would be no world to us if we could not grasp it in 
synthesis by a principle of reason within, which is 
kindred to the rational order without. How then does 
Green deal with the ambiguity which we noted as 
stepping in between Dr. E. Caird's starting-point and 
his conclusions ? Green boldly postulates an absolute 
reason in the objective order — God, demonstrated by 
the analysis of consciousness, — and regards progressive 
human experience of the Good and the True as the pro- 
gressive self-imparting of this absolute consciousness 
to us. Here already one doubts whether Green's meta- 
physical foundations are adequate. Perhaps it is his 
devout soul rather than his industrious intellect which 
leads him so confidently to accept the positive or con- 
structive type of Kantian transcendentalism as a 
demonstration of personality both human and Divine. 
The principle, "thought constitutes reality," is now 
interpreted as follows: — (1) Because the world of 
human experience is a thought-construction, it follows 
that (2) Divine thought constitutes the world, and that 
(3) human experience is not so much knowledge of the 
world as a finite transcript of Divine thought. The 
development appears singular. 

When we pass to more strictly ethical ground, are 
we enlarging our foundations ? Or are we only inter- 
preting anew the results already reached ? Mr. Fair- 



102 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

brother affirms the first view. The present writer's 
impression is that the second would be a truer inter- 
pretation of Green's purpose. This self-centred unity 
in all things is the master-key in his philosophy. It 
is Hegel's key, but the guarantee is different. The 
guarantee in the case of Green, as in the case of other 
British Hegelians, is furnished by a positive reading of 
Kant. And the Logic of Hegel (or Logic with its appli- 
cations) has attained in Green to a richer or a better 
certified ontological meaning. At each end it is hypos- 
tatised, and we find ourselves in the presence of a 
living God and a real soul; while the middle term 
[middle ontologically if hardly epistemologically ; an 
objective — shall we say an independent ? — world seems 
to function in knowledge as little with Green as with 
Berkeley], the world as a real existence, is necessarily 
or at least is actually bound up with God. When we 
proceed to study conduct, we learn that man is free in 
so far as man is identical with God. — <Yes, God is free ; 
but is man free upon this showing ? Green's analysis of 
knowledge seems to preclude that Pantheistic identifica- 
tion of God and the Soul which is so tempting when we 
accept the Transcendental Self and reject its sceptical 
implications. (What self is free? Why, self qua self; 
any self; self as such — there is no distinction.) Green 
in his analysis of knowledge will have none of this. 
But when it comes to an analysis of conduct, he will 
have nothing else. It appears therefore to the present 
writer that Green not merely has precluded Freewill 
in any libertarian sense, but has identified himself — at 
this stage certainly, though perhaps not earlier — with 
Hegel's intellectualism. He does not inquire whether 
the moral consciousness shows us anything more 



BRITISH HEGELIANISM 103 

regarding the nature of the Real than we learn from 
the analysis of knowledge. 

In yet another way we may show that Green's con- 
clusions are of a serious nature for morality. Kant 
found room for freedom in a noumenal region; but 
there is no noumenal region of higher truth and deeper 
reality, unless the phenomenal is merely phenomenal, 
and unless its truth is the merely relative truth of 
appearance. 1 Green makes phenomenal reality real 
reality; human knowledge becomes knowledge. Soul 
and World are now two sides of the same shield. Soul 
asserts its unity, self -identity, and freedom by imposing 
law on the world — or by recognising law in the world. 
So far as man is a part of the world, he is therefore 
subjected to the hardest determinist necessity — and 
that in the sacred name of the freedom and spirituality 
of soul. 

Hegel again had (if he cared to use it) his way of 
escape. His world did not contain merely the two 
regions of Kant's world — phenomenal and noumenal; 
it contained many regions. Thus it was easy for 
Hegel (if he liked) to say that, while from a lower 
point of view man's conduct is determined, yet from 
a higher (and truer) man's conduct is free. But Green 
cannot say this. He has not two regions — nor yet 
many regions — but only one region ; it has two sides, 
but there is no actual or possible division between 
them. Green of course satisfied himself that his view 
of freedom met all the moral interests of the case ; but 
no libertarian will concur in that estimate. And, as 
a matter of pure logic, it seems either that Green's 

1 Confessedly, Kant's way of working out his solution is unsatisfying. 
See above, p. 57. 



104 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

metaphysics of knowledge ought to have been Pan- 
theistic, or that his ethics;ought to have provided sone 
separate personal freedom for man. 

A further consequence of this fact, that Green inter- 
prets the Kantian analysis of knowledge in a theistic 
sense, is that his whole philosophy becomes religious. 
To Green, duty is an absolute revelation ; in the service 
of duty we act for and with God. On the other hand, 
Green regards this as the whole of religion. He is as 
resolute as Dr. Edward Caird to admit no supernatural 
revelation or redemptive act. The systematic unity of 
all things is revealed and grasped in knowledge. God 
is the presupposition of that unity, and it has no other 
presupposition or condition. At least, however, Green 
does not offer us any of the heady stuff which suggests 
a region of religious or of philosophical truth jenseits 
cles Guten unci Bdsen. And again we feel that Green is 
the least Hegelian of all those who have been attracted 
and instructed by Hegel. 



CHAPTEE VII 

British Hegelianism — Later Phases 

Literatuke. — There is no general history of the movement, 
whether in its earlier or in its later modes. Dr. Stirling's As 
Regards Protoplasm, Mr. Sandeman's Problems of Biology, Mr. F. 
H. Bradley's Logic and Appearance and Reality, the Essays in 
Philosophical Criticism, Professor A. Seth Pringle-Pattison's later 
writings, especially Hegelianism and Personality, Professor Ritchie's 
Darwin and Hegel, Mr. Fairbrother's brief statement of The 
Philosophy of T. H. Green, and last — not least — Mr. M'Taggart's 
Studies in Hegelian Dialectic, are the works mainly relied on in 
what follows. Mr. M'Taggart's Studies in Hegelian Cosmology 
and Dr. Baillie's HegeVs Logic are partially dealt with in other 
chapters. 

Hitherto we have studied the founding of the British 
Hegelian faith by three great teachers — Dr. Stirling, 
Dr. E. Caird, and T. H. Green — who all concur in seek- 
ing an entrance to Hegel by means of the teaching of 
Kant. In what follows we have to study some phases 
of change affecting the progress of British Hegelianism. 
All that we can here notice may be grouped in three 
sections. First, we have to study the effect produced 
on the Hegelian movement by contact with Darwinism. 
Secondly, we must say a very little regarding the pro- 
gress or transformations of thought manifested in the 
writings of Mr. F. H. Bradley. Thirdly, we observe 

105 



106 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

Professor A. Seth from a disciple becoming a critic, 
and evoking various replies. 

If the appeal to Kant is the first great peculiarity 
of British Hegelianism, a second great influence upon 
its development is found in the movement towards a 
fusion with that naturalistic philosophy of evolution, 
whose leading names are Darwin and Mr. Spencer. 
Instead of confining ourselves to the mysterious and 
ideal evolution traced out by Hegel, may we not 
amend the master's statement so far as to hold that 
evolution is also to be recognised as a process in time ? 
All the " Hegelian " school now admit this. But 
may we further hold that this recognition — when we 
thoroughly understand what we are doing, and read 
the significance of the evolutional process in the light 
of its results 1 — is not merely compatible with but 
equivalent to the central truths of idealist philosophy ? 
Here doubts arise within the Hegelian school. It is a 
still further question whether the special hypotheses of 
Darwin — or of Spencer — correctly interpet the time 
process of evolution. On the whole, Spencer has been 
noticeably less successful than Darwin in securing the 
attention of Hegelian writers or gaining the suffrages 
of some. Darwin ascribes evolution to struggle for 
existence. In this biologically true ? Is it the whole 
or at least the main biological truth ? Is it susceptible 
of enlarged application ? — to universalise it appears 
strictly impossible. 1 These questions still remain for 
discussion. The present writer believes that he can 
date almost or absolutely to a year the change of atti- 
tude in Dr. E. Caird's class lectures, when that great 
1 See below, Chap. IX. 



BRITISH HEGELIANISM 107 

teacher ceased to regard Darwinism as a hypothesis, 
itself "struggling for existence" against formidable 
rivals, and made acknowledgment of it as — at least 
in measure — a plain statement of facts. 1 What was 
of chief significance then was the assertion of evolution 
as an actual process in time ; but with this admission 
the subtle yet questionable Darwinian theory tended 
to gain acceptance, and to modify the currents of 
thought in the Hegelian school. From that time on- 
wards the movement has been divided. With great 
scorn, and with keen critical power, Dr. Stirling re- 
pudiates Darwin as a mere charlatan in metaphysics 
and even in science. While not inclined, any more 
than his colleagues, to deny the fact of evolution as 
a time process, Dr. Stirling refuses to consider it a 
significant fact, and brands the hypothesis of struggle 
for existence, the assumed cause of evolutionary pro- 
gress, as inconsistent with the evidence and speculat- 
ively absurd. As often as a union of Darwinism 
with Hegelianism is proposed, Dr. Stirling forbids the 
banns. The same attitude is powerfully presented — 
without the element of personal attack on Darwin — in 
Mr. George Sandeman's Problems of Biology. On the 
other hand, Professor Alexander's Moral Order and 
Progress represents pretty much the transition from 
Green to naturalistic evolutionism ; while Professor 
Ritchie's Darwin and Hegel stands for the pure 
neutral synthesis — Hegel the idealistic truth of Dar- 
winism, Darwin the palpable realistic verification of 
Hegel, struggle for existence a formula to be main- 
tained and enforced at all hazards. Green's sympathies 

1 In 1875-76 the attitude of agreement was recent if not absolutely 
new. 



108 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

were rather with the conservative wing. Green is an 
apologist. He finds the naturalistic account of the 
origin of thought and of the moral consciousness 
fatal to philosophy and pernicious to morality. His 
credenda may be few in number, but he is earnest in 
maintaining a credo. If, on the other hand, the 
" Darwin and Hegel " programme is to be taken 
seriously, 1 there seems nothing left to fight for; the 
origin of thought and of conscience not only may 
but must be explored along the lines of naturalism. 
The effect of Green's position in his own case was to 
make him assert an absolute break between mind 
and sense. He does not insist on placing the. break 
between man and the animal world ; mind might con- 
ceivably appear lower down the scale ; but, wherever 
mind first appeared, the decisive break appeared. 
Green would not know how to defend thought or 
morality upon any other terms. That may seem a 
hard saying, yet to a large extent we must concur. 
Unless the origin of conscious mind out of non- 
conscious elements is strictly inconceivable and absurd, 
Transcendentalism is a scholastic curiosity, of no 
practical moment. 

Another point where we may expect to trace in- 
flences from the new sympathy with naturalism is in 
the doctrine of the will taught by those of the Hegel- 
ian tendency. As a whole, the school deny Free Will 
in the " vulgar " sense, while asserting it in a shadowy 
sense of their own. But the more closely they enter 
into alliance with naturalism, the more likely they are 

1 Similarly, in regard to an earlier phase of naturalism, Professor A. 
Setli's early Development from Kant to Hegel taught that ' ' the whole 
psychology of the associationists " might be accepted (p. 9). 



BRITISH HEGELIANISM 109 

to become frankly and " hardly " determinist. It is 
noteworthy, as already remarked, that even T. H. 
Green's philosophy represents a great stride towards 
the formal denial of Free Will. Yet Green, while 
decidedly accepting the facts of evolution, and regard- 
ing them as valuable philosophically, was not affected 
by the movement in favour of belief in natural selec- 
tion ; and as a man he was peculiar for his depth of 
moral passion. It was his assertion of Kantianism in 
a positive sense that brought with it the assertion 
of unbroken universal causation, as absolute and final 
truth. If to these motives there are added the crowd 
of scientific prejudgments which support naturalistic 
evolutionism, it is doubtful how long the British 
Hegelian school will be able in any sense to champion 
Freedom. 

Another great name in the British Hegelian move- 
ment is that of Mr. F. H. Bradley. He might be 
ranked as a fourth founder ; for chronologically Ethical 
Studies stands early [1876], and in it, as we have 
already observed, Mr. Bradley occupies the character- 
istic position of Hegelianised Kantianism. We see in 
that early book an apologetic zeal almost like Green's 
in denouncing naturalistic schemes of ethics, though 
the author also — in conformity with Hegel's leading — 
calls us to a religious region lying out beyond morality, 
where imputation ceases ; this being presented as a 
philosophical interpretation of the Christian doctrine 
of Justification by Faith. But, in view of his subsequent 
developments, Mr. Bradley belongs to the later phases 
of British Hegelianism even more characteristically 
than to the earlier. He has refused to reprint his 



no HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

Ethical Studies, although he has told us somewhat 
lately that he still agrees in the main with its views. 
The basis of Hegel's system, the Logic, receives no 
formal judgment in it. When Mr. Bradley published a 
Logic in 1883, it appeared to some readers notably 
unHegelian. It did not try to elucidate one great 
movement of thought, such as Hegel dealt with. It 
seemed almost more akin to psychology than to meta- 
physics. Any movement by which mind was impelled 
from one point to another ranked as logical ; and the 
metaphysically bewildering positions which Hegel 
implied, and which became all the more prominent 
when we approached him by the way of Kant's 
Critique, had been discarded. Common-sense had 
reasserted itself. Experience was again the lawgiver 
to thought. The repudiation of the belief that reality 
is a "ballet of bloodless categories" gave welcome 
expression to the thoughts or instincts of many minds. 
The idealist tradition continued unbroken upon one 
line only — some will call it the most important ; some 
may even regard it as the only line of importance. 
Mr. Bradley's Logic still taught us to see in predication 
a defining of Beality. 1 In a later and more formal 
study of Appearance and Reality, Mr. Bradley ceased 
to be in any true sense Hegelian. He still makes an 
appeal to contradiction — still sees it everywhere — still 
finds it pointing us onward from "appearance" to 
"reality"; but the various appearances, or the meta- 
physical impulses which they initiate, are rays con- 
verging upon the Real as their centre ; they are not a 
twisted chain, as with Hegel, whose every link grows 
out of the last and passes again into its successor. 
1 Below, end of next chapter. 



BRITISH HEGELIANISM in 

And the character peculiar to Mr. Bradley's Real is 
not defined idealistically as " thought " ; it is called 
experience, and contains all the experiences of " finite " 
appearances in some "transformed" fashion. The 
change may be welcome to apologists ; but we have to 
recognise that nothing of the apologist survives in Mr. 
Bradley's more recent cast of thought. Now that he 
has spoken out fully, we cannot charge him with 
sharing Hegel's superhuman arrogance or pride of 
human intellect; but it is not easy to acquit him of 
resembling Hegel in the inhuman coldness with which 
all themes are handled. 

The doctrine of degrees of reality, allotted to the 
various appearances, presents itself as the last word in 
a long evolution of thought. The graduation of 
categories, which Professor Pringle-Pattison and others 
have praised, is now given a definite ontological inter- 
pretation. So far as I am aware, Hegel gives no clear 
warrant for this development of his views. Indeed, it 
is hard to extract from Hegel any plain definitions of 
the Real ; the " Being, Nothing " paradox at its start 
infects the whole of his system. Mr. Bradley's doctrine 
may be true; it certainly is obscure and difficult to 
grasp. "To be or not to be — that is the question," 
exclaims, with no trace of Hamlet's subtlety, a be- 
wildered common sense. "Yes and No, "says Hegel; 
" that is the answer ; no other is possible : Yes, and 
also, No." " I cannot entirely agree," says Mr. Brad- 
ley ; " but I will give you the correct answer — More or 
less." Truly, it is a hard saying. There are things 
which will not graduate or quantify. 1 The " either — or 

1 A brilliant and erratic Edinburgh theological professor, with a 
mercilessly categorical mind — always at high noon, in a blaze of 



H2 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

of the ordinary consciousness " has some poor rights ; 
as the French say, a door must be open or shut. A 
doctrine like Lotze's stands in a more favourable 
position. According to it, everything that exists feels, 
while some existences not only feel but think ; and in 
proportion to the degree of feeling — if we like to say 
so — is the degree of reality. The unexplained affirma- 
tion of degrees, in a literal sense, on purely logical or 
metaphysical grounds, is far more bewildering. 

A special and additional difficulty arises out of Mr. 
Bradley's doctrine of the nature of the absolute reality. 
He has a definite doctrine to lay before us; and he 
affirms that finite " appearances " have no share at all 
in the nature of absolute and infinite " reality." It is 
a strange background for the doctrine of degrees of 
reality; and Mr. Bradley's reasoning in proof of the 
latter doctrine is not less strange. Every appearance 
must have some degree of reality, since we find our- 
selves constrained to tabulate appearances, and to rank 
some nearer the real than others. How would this 
reasoning show in a commoner application ? One has 
to mark examination papers : 300 marks are total ; 100 
are a pass ; less than 100 imply a failure. It rarely or 
never happens that a student gets no marks at all ; in 
a bad case he gets about 50 ; a more ordinary failure 
means 70 or 80 or 90. A tie or bracket is rare ; triplets 
are practically unknown. Would Mr. Bradley permit 
men who had scored 50 to 90 marks to say that they 
had all passed in different degrees, since each of them 
stood definitely nearer the standard than others, or 

unclouded sun — used to tell how lie had asked a boatman, " Is not one 
of your oars longer than the other?" and received the reply, " Oh, 



BRITISH HEGELIANISM 113 

definitely further from it ? I fear it would be neces- 
sary to adhere to one's original opinion, that none of 
thern had passed at all. The application of the parable 
is easy. If the absolute reality is unknowable, it does 
not seem feasible to affirm that the known "appearance" 
possesses any degree of reality. But conversely, if the 
finite "appearance" enjoys a certain degree of reality 
as an appearance of the Real, it seems audacious to 
declare that the absolute is " not personal, nor is it 
moral, nor is it beautiful or true." 1 We do not quote 
these words as summing up fairly the whole of Mr. 
Bradley's brilliant if difficult book. They represent, 
however, an important turning-point, and they em- 
body some singularly momentous conclusions. And 
they seem to be supported by half of Mr. Bradley's 
mind, while opposed by the other half. 

Once again; Mr. Bradley not only formulates a 
doctrine of degrees, but appeals for confirmation to his 
own reading of arithmetic. He may further tell us, if 
he likes, that according to his belief, less than 50 per 
cent, of the Absolute is revealed in any phenomenon or 
in the totality of phenomena. (Hegel of course may be 
said to hold that 100 per cent, is revealed.) Accept- 
ing this arithmetical language, while protesting that it 
is not really relevant, we should have to maintain that 
more than 50 per cent, is revealed — or, in theological 
language, that the Divine image in man, and especially 
in the Son of man, constitutes a relation to God more 

1 Appearance and Reality, p. 533. The immediate context goes on 
to speak of the danger of "worse mistakes." ". . . It is better to 
affirm personality than to call the absolute impersonal." But the 
absolute is neuter. "It is superpersonal," says Mr. Bradley. Such a 
subject effectually cancels such a predicate. 
8 



ii4 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

real and more potent than the separation between 
creature and creator, finite and infinite. Or some 
might try even a bolder argument. Bishop Butler has 
urged the claims not merely of probability but of 
improbable though possible risks; and it might be 
contended that inadequate and even false conceptions 
of God are less deceptive than the blank negations 
of Agnosticism. If you affirm the existence of the 
Absolute, and decline to call him good, you practically 
force yourself to think of him as lower than man — 
who is good or at least capable of goodness. Adequate 
or inadequate, our highest must serve as our clue in 
construing the nature of the highest of all. If we do 
not assert the presence in God of what we hold most 
sacred, then we implicitly deny to Him all that is 
sacred and worthy. 

The third part of this chapter connects itself with 
the name of Professor Andrew Seth. Following up his 
extraordinarily brilliant student work upon Hegelian 
lines, he appeared as joint editor with Mr. R. B. Hal- 
dane of a volume of Essays in Philosophical Criticism, 
published in 1883, inscribed to the memory of Green, 
and introduced in a preface by Dr. Edward Caird. In 
some respects this book records the high-water mark 
of the Hegelian tide, at least in Scotland. It was 
essentially a manifesto from Edinburgh and Glasgow 
Universities. While several contributors had passed 
on to Oxford or Cambridge, only one contributor — Mr. 
Bosanquet — was neither a Scotsman nor a Scottish 
student. We may say, therefore, that in 1883 "Hegel- 
ianism " held the field, not merely in a university 
which, like Glasgow, was dominated by the influence 



BRITISH HEGELIANISM 115 

of a teacher devoted to the study of Hegel, but even in 
Edinburgh, where the infection was received from books 
and not from men. It is not, of course, claimed that 
these Essays were the masterpiece of the movement, 
though they are well worth reading still, as stating 
its principles upon many different sides. But they 
were noteworthy when published as being the first- 
fruits of men who plainly were destined to attain 
distinction, and from whose influence much might be 
hoped. 

Some of these writers still maintain or carry to fresh 
issues the principles which they then expounded. But 
the editors are not found among these. Mr. Haldane 
has given himself up to politics and law ; and — what is 
more startling — Mr. Seth has become a confessed and 
resolute critic of Hegelianism. If the advance of the 
school seemed in 1883 all-victorious, we must reckon 
1887, the year of Mr. Seth's second Balfour Lectures, 
which treat of Hegelianism and Personality, as not 
less memorable for a severe check to the Hegelian 
influence. 

It must be confessed that the course of Dr. Seth's 
criticisms suggests difficulties even to those most grate- 
ful for a protest on behalf of God, Freedom, and Im- 
mortality. Professor Seth does not believe 1 that there 
is absolute antagonism between his new views and his 
old, although he grants that, in the essay on Philo- 
sophy as Criticism of Categories, 2 he "did not suffi- 
ciently recognise the necessary limitations " of the view 
which he was advocating. Not a few readers will 
consider that this statement is below the mark. Indeed, 

1 Hegelianism and Personality, 2nd ed., p. 21, footnote. 

2 In the Essays in Philosophical Criticism. 



n6 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

even in the later book, as one runs smoothly on from 
p. 18 to p. 20, nothing occurs to prepare one for the 
statement contained in the footnote on. p. 21, that " the 
foregoing account of Idealism made consistent is not 
intended for a statement of " Dr. Seth's " own position." 
Whatever the historical genesis of the footnote, it reads 
like an after-thought, and strikes upon the mind with a 
shock of surprise. In his earlier writings, particularly 
in his Hibbert Essay on the Development from Kant 
to Hegel, Mr. Seth had given a singularly lucid and 
persuasive account of the new path to Hegel via Kant, 
while no doubt the difficulties of Idealism were present 
there as elsewhere. What was to be understood x by 
"the necessary reference of all existence to self -con- 
sciousness " ? The phrase is vague enough to cover 
half a dozen interpretations. Again, we are told 2 that 
" the idea of God " may be " His real existence " ; while 
pp. 76, 77 amount to a repudiation of the orthodox 
gloss upon Hegel, vouched for even by Dr. Stirling, 
which insists that " thought implies a thinker," and so 
marches straight on to Theism. Only in regard to the 
validity of the moral consciousness does the Develop- 
ment from Kant to Hegel forestall the firm criticisms 
found in the later work. But no passage of Mr. Seth's 
earlier teaching is more striking than the passage 
quoted upon p. 20 of Hegelianism and Personality 
from Philosophy as Criticism of Categories. " So far 
is it from being a figure of speech that the self exists 
only through the world and the world through the 
self, that we might say with equal truth the self is the 
world and the world is the self. The self and the 
world are only two sides of the same reality ; they are 

1 P. 50. 2 P. 123. 



BRITISH HEGELIANISM 117 

the same intelligible world looked at from two opposite 
points of view." 

These earlier persuasive statements of Idealism are 
now repeated as being epistemologically true, but 
ontologically, it would appear, they are now considered 
false and even absurd. What we necessarily think, in 
the process of knowledge, is that the world is the alter 
ego of the self. In Kant's terms, " the understanding 
makes nature." There is great difficulty in such a 
position, and, conceivably enough, the sense in which 
idealism is accepted in these pages may be thought 
to evade some of the deeper ontological questions in- 
volved. But is it not stranger still to dismiss positions 
which thought necessarily assumes in the process of 
knowledge as being true only in some technical sense, 
while not true " ontologically " — in reality — of reality ? 
That view puts a great strain upon the conception of 
" epistemology." Professor Seth indeed offers additional 
explanation and justification of his new position. He 
tells us that the Transcendental self is simply generic 
— a class name. Surely this teaching is a relapse into 
hard realism, and an abandonment of Idealism in any 
genuine or proper sense. Knowledge is not a process 
which goes on similarly in a number of different 
individuals, with results that may be compared and 
generalised. Knowledge is one. It is the reference of 
things to an objective centre. The relativity of know- 
ledge is not at all more remarkable than its absolute- 
ness. What was true once is always true. When you 
and I know the same thing, we do not simply pass 
through psychologically similar experiences. We know 
the same thing, or neither of us knows reality at all ; 
we know the same thing, or we can have no fellowship 



n8 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

in knowledge. In fact, it is difficult to see how know- 
ledge should be possible if "the individual alone is 
the real." x Conversely, if Dr. Seth's epistemology 
holds good, it seems different to separate it from 
the ontological conclusion, that in knowledge — so far 
as attained — individual man is identified with the 
Absolute. 

Professor Seth's lectures have been ably replied to, 
more than once or twice, by more than one or two 
writers, and in more than one or two senses. We 
mention four replies — by Mr. Fairbrother, Mr. M'Taggart, 
Professor Ritchie, and Professor Henry Jones. 

Dr. Seth's criticisms were directed as much against 
Green as against Hegel. For Green, as we have re- 
marked, gives the most explicit development in the 
English language of Idealism, as an all-inclusive philo- 
sophy and a source of guidance. Though he was 
separated from Hegel by characteristic differences, he 
defended many of Hegel's positions, and did so from 
that Kantian basis which is most likely to serve as 
a rallying ground to Englishmen. Mr. Fairbrother's 
clear and able little book upon Green devotes a good 
deal of attention to repelling Professor Seth's attacks. 
It is successfully shown that Green was a Theist, and 
that Theism was a vital part of Idealism as Green con- 
ceived it. Accordingly, Mr. Seth's criticisms on this 
point do not hold good in regard to Green's personal 
belief — but it is still possible to contend that they hold 
good of Hegel, or even of the natural issue of much 
of Green's thinking. But some of Mr. Fairbrother's 
explanations or concessions bewilder us, especially 
when he assures us that Transcendentalism is simply 
1 P. 135. 



BRITISH HEGELIANISM 119 

an analysis of the given fact of human knowledge. If 
that be so, the praise and the blame bestowed upon 
Green alike rest upon misconception. He was not the 
daring speculator we supposed. He was hardly a 
philosopher at all, but one more plodding analyst of 
the "facts of consciousness." Unless knowledge is a 
fact supremely unlike other facts, Idealism is gratuitous 
folly. If knowledge is what Idealism believes it to be, 
then the study of knowledge, so far as we can carry it, 
may be expected to teach us not only what things are, 
but what they must be — as in the elementary pro- 
position that 2 + 2 not only do but must make 4. The 
present writer at any rate continues to believe that 
Green was an idealist and a philosopher. 

To dispose of Mr. Seth's criticisms upon Green by 
means of explanations in favour of common sense, 
might seem bold enough. What shall we say of the 
courage that proposed the same vindication in the case 
of Hegel? This has been shown in Mr. M'Taggart's 
Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic, a book which 
introduces us to another singularly lucid expounder 
of the crabbed wisdom of the Master. Severe criticism 
is passed by Professor Seth — as by others — upon the 
transition from the Logic to the Philosophy of Nature. 
But Mr. M'Taggart argues that upon a fair interpre- 
tation, not even there, and certainly nowhere else, does 
Hegel try to prove real existence from mere thought. 
He does not seem to have been struck with that 
frequent "snort," to which Professor Seth calls 
attention, in which Hegel expresses his contempt 
for " mere " existence — as a thought, but of a very low 
type. Mr. M'Taggart also takes that view of Hegel's 
idealism which identifies it definitely in ultimate 



120 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

analysis with the proposition that Nothing but thinkers 
exists. I should certainly have thought that this could 
not have passed for the whole or the governing motive 
of Hegel's idealism. When thrown to the front, it 
seems to suggest an idealism of too "subjective" a 
type. In some sense, the Logic seems to imply that 
thought, and nothing but thought, exists. In some 
sense, the Philosophy of Nature seems to affirm the 
existence of a reality which is not a thinker, or a 
collection of thinkers, though it is reality for thought. 
Mr. M'Taggart, like Mr. Bradley, may be said to take 
one clear line through Hegel. Both, in different 
fashions, confine truth to the highest stage, and treat 
lower stages as transitory and evanescent. On this 
view the Logic treats reality as a system, not because 
its successive stages together constitute a system, but 
because the thought of a system constitutes the highest 
term reached. So again, the Notion or the Philosophy 
of Spirit stands highest — therefore, says Mr. M'Taggart, 
spirits are real for Hegel, and everything else is merely 
subjective phenomenon. Mr. Seth's view of philosophy 
as criticism of categories, at least in the form in which 
he now maintains it, develops unambiguously another 
of Hegel's suggestions. Every category has its legiti- 
mate application. Every one is right in its own place. 
" Criticism of categories " thus becomes a peaceable, 
and no doubt useful, delimitation of frontiers. In 
Hegel's Logic, as revised by Professor Seth, the 
categories lie comfortably alongside each other like 
compartments in a jewel-box. In Mr. M'Taggart's 
revision, on the other hand, the higher category 
swallows its predecessors, until the highest swallows 
all the rest. The bewildering truth is that Hegel 



BRITISH HEGELIANISM 121 

holds to both alternatives. It is doubtful whether 
we can reasonably be asked to tolerate his "Yes 
and No." Mere human minds, which try to take a 
clear line through the Master's tangled utterances, 
generally have to cut away one-half. And they are 
very probably wise in doing so ; but they are hardly 
entitled to say that Hegel did the same. Again, with 
Mr. M'Taggart (as with Mr. Bradley too !), thought is 
dependent upon experience for data. Thought is a 
relating activity pure and simple. I should certainly 
have held that thought with Hegel was both a dis- 
tinguishing and a relating activity ; and in this sense 
at least created its content, namely, by creating those 
distinctions which it holds together. Even in the 
Logic, which Mr. MTaggart has done so much to 
elucidate, one must take his main point with a quali- 
fication. If you say that anything is, you imply, 
upon adequately stringent analysis, that it belongs to 
an absolute system of perfect determination. What 
is unHegelian here is a certain emphasis in saying that 
anything is. For, in Hegel's judgment, when you say 
that, you say nothing at all; you might as well say 
that it is not. Probably this is part of the alloy of 
paradox in Hegel, and not part of his virgin ore. 
Yet out of this feature the dialectic method — Hegel's 
grand means of verification and principle of advance — 
develops itself; and the dialectic is Mr. M'Taggart 's 
favourite aspect of the Master. Once again Mr. 
M'Taggart seems credible in his beliefs, but mistaken 
in imputing them to Hegel. Further differences arise 
in regard to immortality and in regard to the origin 
of evil. Mr. M'Taggart feels a living interest in the 
hope of personal immortality ; we see no clear trace of 



122 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

that in Hegel. Mr. M'Taggart gives up the origin of 
evil as a mystery; Hegel does not believe in any 
mystery which his logic cannot penetrate, least of all 
in this mystery. One difference is admitted. While 
Hegel finds a key to all difficulties in the purely 
intellectual idea of system, Mr. M'Taggart in defining 
reality falls back upon the psychological trichotomy 
of intellect plus feeling plus will. Finally, he tells 
us — in opposition to general British opinion from Dr. 
Stirling downwards, and particularly in opposition 
to Mr. Seth — that Hegel's greatness lies not in the 
applications of his principle, but in the "Dialectic." 
He tries, however, to show that the Dialectic rarely 
— indeed, only at the very first — implies progress 
absolutely by antagonism. In other words, the value 
of the Dialectic, or of Hegel's philosophy, is held by 
Mr. M'Taggart to consist not in any general principle, 
but in the detailed analysis of category after category. 
(This, once more, is half of Hegel's perplexingly com- 
plex position.) Accordingly, Mr. M'Taggart's book 
affords little material for judging of the value of 
Hegelianism as newly interpreted. Several articles 
contributed to Mind since 1896, and not yet reprinted 
in book form, furnish interesting and suggestive dis- 
cussions on particular points — explaining Hegel, 
correcting his logic in detail, and endeavouring to 
show that the Dialectic wears a less and less para- 
doxical aspect as it advances. One can hardly doubt 
that much of this careful and ingenious work will be 
found permanently valuable. Still, it seems as if the 
commentator and interpreter discredited the Dialectic 
in principle. If paradox is an unworthy thing, how 
can it come in at all ? If there is a flaw at the 



BRITISH HEGELIANISM 123 

foundation, does it not render the whole superstructure 
unsafe ? One holding these views is not likely to 
rescue more than an occasional piece of salvage out 
of Hegel's thoughts. Last of all we may mention still 
another suggestive contrast. Dr. John Caird greatly 
offended common sense by calling upon us to " think " 
this or that object. Mr. M'Taggart always "thinks 
0/" reality. 1 

The third reply to be noted — that of Professor 
Ritchie — is significant for our present purpose, as repre- 
senting — clearly, vivaciously, decisively — the central 
currents of the British Hegelian movement. He 
states 2 the main position of the Kant-cum-Hegel 
doctrine in the following italicised sentences: "If 
knowledge be altogether dependent on sensation, 
knowledge is impossible. But knowledge is possible 
because the sciences exist. Therefore knowledge is not 
altogether dependent on sensation." This is very 
suggestive ; but is it adequate to the idealist doctrine 
to speak as if knowledge were partly dependent upon 
sensations in contrast with thought ? What onto- 
logical meaning does the position bear ? It will be 
unfortunate if the controversy with naturalism should 
collapse into a mere scholastic technicality; and that 
danger is brought appreciably nearer by Professor 
Ritchie's enthusiasm for Darwinism. Mr. Ritchie is 
perhaps bolder, and probably more representative, 
when he writes, 3 "we" — idealists — "are quite as 

1 For a notice of some parts of Mr. M 'Taggart's later Studies in Hegelian 
Cosmology — the use of the expression "cosmology" as applying to all 
realities is peculiarly Mr. M 'Taggart's own — see Chaps. XV. and XVI. 

2 Darwin and Hegel, p. 10. 

3 Ibid. p. 105. 



I2 4 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

ready to talk of 'thought conforming to reality' as 
we are to talk of sunset and sunrise, although in both 
cases we have accepted the 'Copernican' theory." 1 
Though he accepts as satisfactory one or two correc- 
tions made in the 2nd edition of Hegelianism and 
Personality, I do not apprehend that Professor 
Ritchie considers all of Dr. Seth's positions worthy 
of approval, or even compatible with one another. 

The last reply to be quoted is that of Professor 
Henry Jones. In the course of some articles in Mind, 
and again in his valuable though very hostile examina- 
tion of The Philosophy of Lotze: the Doctrine of 
Thought, he affirms as the genuine position of himself 
and his friends, that "Reality determines Thought" 
These words — italicised by Professor Jones — are in flat 
contradiction to Professor Ritchie's " Copernicanism " ; 
and indeed, I take it, involve a deliberate repudiation of 
Idealism. Both Hegel and the British Hegelians — e.g. 
Green — have (in different ways) verified by an analysis 
of the nature of thought the correspondence between 
thought and things ; and both of these idealist pleas — 
the " Notion " or the " Dialectic " in the case of Hegel, 
the constructive reading of Kant's Critique in the 
case of Green and others — have staked everything 
upon the principle that the understanding makes 
nature, or that thought creates reality, or that we find 
necessity in all things, and necessity exists only for 

1 Kant compared his revolutionary change of the point of view in 
philosophy with the astronomical revolution of Copernicus. It was 
finely said by Professor Seth in his early Development, etc., that the 
parallel had more justice than Kant supposed, since, when we take 
idealism in a positive and constructive sense, we perceive thought to 
be the true objective centre of reality, not a dependent planet or a 
phenomenon of individual minds. 



BRITISH HEGELIANISM 125 

thought. Professor Seth may at least pride himself on 
having secured this pointed recantation of Idealism 
from a distinguished fighter in the Hegelian ranks. 
It is true that Professor Jones does seem con- 
scious of having withdrawn or even modified any 
assertions. It is further true that — like Mr. Bradley 
— he continues the idealist tradition so far as to hold 
that Logic deals with or defines reality, and does not 
merely compare thoughts. Further, he makes a gentle 
protest against Mr. Bradley's unidealist doctrine, that 
in external perception the mind comes in a 'peculiar 
sense in contact with reality. A logical doctrine, the 
nature of the copula, worked out by Mr. Bosanquet 
and implied by Dr. E. Caird, is regarded as giving a 
deductive clue to the nature of religion. 1 Still, if the 
true truth is that reality determines thought, Professor 
Jones' philosophy is not idealistic, even if it be an out- 
growth of idealism. 

The British Hegelian movement — if we may once 
again use that questionable title — took its rise in Dr. 
Stirling, and has kindled a flame of thought in many 
acute and able minds. By degrees it has secured for 
itself prophets who are masters of literary clearness 
and utterance — possibly to the damage of its original 
burden of obscure but weighty thoughts — certainly to 
the comfort of the reader. All through, the leading 
minds have hesitated to pledge themselves to Hegel ; 
but, all through, they have sharply resented criticisms 
directed against any part of Hegel's teaching. The 

1 Footnote on p. 369. It is very Hegelian, on the strength of a 
purely logical doctrine — from contemplation, not of a "little flower," 
but of a little copula — to make the claim, ' ' I know what God and man is. " 



126 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

formal value of the Dialectic might have seemed to 
find no defender — though probably Dr. E. Caird implies 
its truth — when Mr. M'Taggart arises, and with what- 
ever novelties of interpretation, singles it out for special 
praise. He and others have done their best to pare 
away the more obvious excrescences. Whether they 
have succeeded or not — and whether or not, if success- 
ful, they have lopped off living branches — at any rate 
the effort is significant. And perhaps more significant 
still is the appearance of works by men who learned 
their philosophy from Hegel, but who are now break- 
ing fresh ground. For many years a characteristic liter- 
ary product of the movement was the commentary in 
which an author was proved — in contradiction perhaps 
to his own formulated belief — an unconscious prophecy 
of Hegelianism. This has been done by Dr. E. Caird 
not only for Kant, in whose case there are special 
reasons justifying the identification, but for so different 
a writer as Comte; by Dr. C. M. Douglas, M.P., for 
the ethical writings of J. S. Mill ; and by Professor 
Jones 1 for Browning. Valuable as these books are 
from their contents, their method tends to become an 
artificial mannerism. It was well that the fashion 
should change. Though we probably have among us 
no writer who is worthy to wear the mantle of Kant 
or Hegel, still we are emerging from an age of com- 
mentaries and epigonism when we have such books 
produced as Mr. Bradley's Appearance and Reality, or 
Professor Royce's World and the Individual. 

1 Professor Jones' Lotze, on the other hand, is frankly hostile, and in 
no sense a sympathetic self-criticism of Lotze in the light of his own 
principles, unless the reductio ad absurdum is a form of sympathy. 



CHAPTER VIII 
The Hegelian Logic 

Literature. — A. The lesser Logic is translated with prolego- 
mena by Dr. W. Wallace, 1st ed., 1874 ; 2nd ed., 1892. Portions of 
the greater Logic are rendered and expounded in Dr. Stirling's 
Secret of Hegel, 1st ed., 1865 ; 2nd ed., 1897 ; and it is summarised 
in Dr. Harris's Kegel's Logic. 

B. The Phenomenology runs parallel with the whole of Hegel's 
later writings. 

C. Dr. Caird's Kant and Mr. M'Taggart's Hegelian Dialectic deal 
with questions of principle. Mr. Bradley's and Mr. Bosanquet's 
Logics are the work of men who have learned much from Hegel, 
but who are anxious to push farther on. Dr. Baillie's Hegelian 
Logic gives a most useful account of its genesis, and adds some 
criticism. 

It is one of the peculiarities of Hegel that the same 
discussion passes muster as logical and as meta- 
physical. From the point of view of Idealism, the 
identification is obvious enough. Logic tells us how 
we must think of things ; metaphysics tell us how 
things must be ; and, whatever else Idealism involves, 
it involves a belief that necessary principles of thought 
are true in point of fact. We may even find it harder 
to recognise in Hegel's work the analogies to other 
men's logics than the analogies to other men's meta- 
physics. Certainly one approaching Hegel's treatise 

127 



128 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

with the syllogistic logic in his mind will be in danger 
of utter bewilderment. He will be at a loss to trace any 
identity such as justifies the use of the same name. 
Historically, he may be aware, Kant's Transcendental 
Logic in the Critique of Pure Reason is the binding 
link ; but that path is difficult and obscure. Can we 
explain matters in any simpler way ? What is logic ? 
And what is syllogistic logic ? 

Syllogism is the logic of argument ; the merit which 
it seeks to secure is self-consistency. But argument 
is not the highest or healthiest exercise of the human 
mind. It is a kind of prize ring. If you modify your 
premises — and the best or only use of argument to a 
wise man is to help him to modify his premises — you 
fall under suspicion of " shifting ground," and so break- 
ing the laws of the logical prize ring. Or at least you 
suffer a rhetorical defeat. You cannot therefore afford, 
in arguing for victory, to become wiser than your 
former self. Syllogism gives an unreal fixity to the 
merely provisional utterances of fallible minds. 

In spite of this defect, logicians have generalised the 
principles of the syllogistic prize ring under the high- 
sounding name of Laws of Thought. Here we come 
nearer to Hegel's point of view. He also is investigat- 
ing the " laws of thought as thought." But he differs 
from formal Logic in refusing to believe that the one 
concern and interest of thought is self-consistency. 
That is the one principle of argument, for argument 
cannot go on in its absence. Certain fixed points 
must be granted on both sides, and whatever either 
side affirms it must continue to affirm ; or debate will 
be fruitless. But there is no such fixity in healthy 
unpolemical human thought. Its rule is to modify, 



THE HEGELIAN LOGIC 129 

revise, approximate — to be tireless in the search for 
perfect accuracy and absolute truth. Self -consistency 
would be a sufficient rule only if premises were in- 
fallibly true, and if all premises were given exhaust- 
ively. Yet the maxim is evidently made for a being who 
gets his experience (apparently) in distinct scraps, and 
has to bring his thoughts together. It has no mean- 
ing for "thought as thought." As long as pedants 
maintain this logical ideal, the Philistinism of the 
practical man will nourish in their despite. He will 
still go to experience for abundant living detail, care- 
less whether or not he can piece it together ; and on 
the whole he will be right in doing so. 

There is another reason why we must maintain 
that self-consistency is not the whole ideal of thought. 
We have spoken of a man's correcting his statement 
of principles as a result of argument. But even where 
that does not fall to be done, our knowledge grows 
when we learn how a principle is embodied in its 
details, and when we consciously regard the details as 
instances of a principle. If we do not secure the 
absence of contradiction, we secure the presence of 
combination. And thus knowledge becomes more co- 
herent, or, in Hegel's words, more " concrete." Hegel 
protests against the view that concreteness is peculiar 
to sense, or, strictly speaking, is found in sense at all. 
Many-sided coherence is the mark of thought ; " ab- 
stract" — i.e. one-sided — thought is vicious, if it be 
anything more than a passing stage towards a fully 
conscious grasp of the many-sided coherence of reality. 
The true movement of thought is not from discord to 
self-consistency, but from vagueness to definiteness — 
from a vague generality to a general known and 
9 



130 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

grasped in its applications [Hegel says, in all 'possible 
applications] — from a vague particularity to a par- 
ticular placed in the system of thought - mirroring 
reality. 

The same rule — " from vagueness to definiteness " — 
can be verified in regard to perception. According^, 
the rule helps us to claim perception as a process 
of thought — not a process of sense anterior to thought, 
as vulgar opinion makes it. Ordinary opinion regards 
sense-experience as a series of disconnected or arbit- 
rarily connected fragments. Our knowledge is of 
A + B -f C + . . . There is no relation between the dif- 
ferent terms ; relation is a human fiction. Or, if relation 
exists objectively, we learn it from the behaviour of 
the terms themselves, wholly a posteriori. It may 
exist or may not — terms do not imply relations nor re- 
lations terms. Even sense-perception, however, verifies 
the rule, From vagueness to definiteness. No percep- 
tion is entirely new. Each is a fresh instance of what 
our past intellectual life has consisted in. Wholly 
new experience would be impossible experience ; it 
would rend the unity of consciousness. We have 
always before us our half- vague, half -defined picture of 
the universe. New experience is not so much a new 
stock of material as a new touch of shading in a plan 
or a picture already constructed. As Sir Joshua 
Reynolds claimed that it took him " thirty years " to 
paint a picture, so we take all our years to apprehend 
the last fragment of conscious experience as we appre- 
hend it. 

The logic of consistency, when transferred from 
syllogism and applied to nature, becomes a logic of 
classification. Ancient science worked with this logic, 



THE HEGELIAN LOGIC 131 

and thus took the necessary first steps towards the 
knowledge of nature. Science begins in classification. 
We put things together which are alike ; if they are 
not altogether alike, we inquire how far they agree ; 
and we put those closest in which the resemblance is 
greatest. Now the significant thing here is, that nature 
submits to classifying. In a random world, were such 
a thing possible, it would be useless to classify objects. 
Our class names would cany no coherent connotation 
with them, and we should lose our labour, as if we 
were children classifying flowers by their colours. 
The shallow conceptualist solution of the Realist prob- 
lem of the Middle Ages leaves out of sight the only 
fact of significance, namely, that it is worth while 
to group things under general names, since in rerwm 
natura they exhibit general characters. Science knows 
of natural as well as of artificial classes. There are 
natural classes in thought, because there are classes of 
things — genera — universals — in nature around. Thus 
even the logic of classification implies that nature is 
an embodiment of thought. The very possibility of 
classifying — and still more its usefulness, wherever a 
distinct mass of general assertions is true of a defined 
group of phenomena — implies that our world is ruled 
not by chance but by reason. One might even ask 
whether, as we rise in a genuinely scientific or natural 
classification, our more and more general assertions 
do not also become more and more true. 

We have spoken of the grouping of phenomena ; 
but, once more, classification itself carries us beyond 
phenomena to things or substances or "permanent 
possibilities " of phenomenal manifestation. But there 
the logic of classification stops short. Behind the 



132 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

veil of changing qualities it indicates the permanent 
thing or substance — recites its likeness or unlikeness, as 
manifested in its phenomena, to other things or sub- 
stances — and then is done. A great positive step in 
advance is made by inductive logic, best stated on the 
pages of J. S. Mill. The main emphasis now falls, not 
upon substances, but upon causes. Still it is an entire 
error — though Mill himself was seduced into it by his 
bad metaphysics — to suppose that you can study causes 
without referring them to permanent substances. The 
world which science investigates is no nickering phan- 
tasmagoria of bodiless appearances. It includes, on 
Mill's own showing, " kinds " and " the great permanent 
natural causes " — in fact, it is a world of substances. 
But instead of qualities we now say causes. An 
acid, e.g., is defined in chemistry by three marks — (1) It 
has a sour taste, (2) it reddens blue litmus paper, (3) it 
combines with a base to form a neutral salt. The first 
quality arises in a relation to human sensibility : the 
other two have to do with relations to other substances. 
If a quality is not a relation, at least quality is only 
known or knowable in relation to other things. " In 
itself " it is or can be nothing at all. Plainly, it is only 
a matter of phraseology whether we call sourness a 
quality of an acid, habitually latent but coming into 
exercise when it encounters a palate — or whether we 
say that the acid (given necessary conditions) causes a 
sensation of sourness. Studying from the point of 
view of cause, we leave the hortus siccus of classifi- 
cation for a living world of orderly changes. We see 
the changeless substances of classification melting away 
into the ordered changes of the universe. There is 
only one substance in ultimate analysis — the world 



THE HEGELIAN LOGIC 133 

itself, with its unalterable sum of matter and of force. 
Things or substances round which we draw a line by 
" abstraction " — to which we give a name of their own 
— are but the provisional local representatives of the 
universe. In chemistry, perhaps, we see most distinctly 
the transition from the apparently solitary and self- 
centred substance to the living world of causal processes 
— permanent in its regularity. Each substance seems 
complete in itself, but it turns out you can say nothing 
about it except you put it in relation to others. Sub- 
stance, causality, reciprocity — these are the thoughts 
vindicated and defined by Kant — these are the thoughts 
defined and explained by Mill. Mill's logic implies a 
better metaphysic than his own. It articulates into 
the constructive portion of Kant's idealism. 

We have spoken in our own fashion of the defects of 
the syllogistic logic ; Hegel's criticism is naturally 
bolder. Not content with dethroning platitude, he 
instals paradox in its place. His views upon two or 
three points of the old school logic may be mentioned 
in passing. 

His lesser Logic contains an examination of the 
alleged Laws of Thought as follows: — (1) He treats 
the Law of Identity and Law of Contradiction as 
synonymous. At the same time he declares the logic 
which works by these laws a barren logic of the 
understanding, and charges it with treating dis- 
tinctions as given elements of reality, instead of 
merging them in a higher unity. (2) He identifies 
the Law of Excluded Middle with an application of 
Leibniz's Principle of Difference, according to which 
no two things can be exactly alike. The abstract 
understanding thinks it does justice to that view 



134 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

when it asks, " This — or not this ? " Really, says 
Hegel, the idea of unqualified difference is a parallel 
abstraction to the idea of bare tautological identity. 
(3) The synthesis of identity and difference is said to be 
found in " the ground," which is equivalent to Leibniz's 
"Law of Sufficient Reason," and points us not to 
abstract identity or endless unlikeness, but to the 
higher truth of a principle developing into a system 
of mutually involved and related elements. The dis- 
cussion is characteristically suggestive and charac- 
teristically obscure. 

It is also noteworthy that Hegel repudiates the very 
form of the judgment or proposition round which Logic 
is built up. As the substance in nature is a merely 
provisional representative of the universe, so the sub- 
ject in predication is "abstractly" separated from the 
whole of things to which it belongs. Thus the pro- 
position is an inadequate formula; and Hegel always 
permits himself to substitute " false " for " inade- 
quate"; he therefore calls the proposition false. Or 
its true speculative type is found, he tells us, in such a 
proposition as " the real is the rational." Plainly this 
alleged higher type is a sort of equation, or a universal 
proposition with quantified and universal predicate — 
Thompson's U; "All A is all B." Dr. E. Caird regards 
quantification of the predicate as a stage in the rapid 
descent by which formal logic passes from implied to 
explicit tautology and equivalence. If Hegel approves 
one of its phases, we may be sure it is not as an 
equation that the "speculative proposition" pleases 
him. What he loves is the element of difference ; and 
he finds that in the peculiar kick or plunge which the 
unexpected quantification — the second " all " or the 



THE HEGELIAN LOGIC 135 

second " the " — inflicts upon the reader. The proposi- 
tion bucks ; we do not know which is its head or which 
is its tail. Considered as a proposition, it is not one 
proposition (or attribution), but two. Hegel values it 
as the break-up or the break-down of the inadequate 
propositional form which misses the speculative truth of 
things. In a proposition, the subject masquerades as a 
fixed and definite magnitude. When the predicate is 
quantified, the predicate becomes a sort of second 
subject, and tries to turn the original subject into a 
predicate. Thus justice is done according to Hegel to 
the fuller Reality. It is well to recognise the limita- 
tions of the propositional form. " Speech," said Carlyle, 
" is linear ; character is solid." We might generalise 
the remark, and say, Propositional thinking is linear ; 
reality is solid. But is Hegel right in holding that 
progress involves the pulverising of the imperfect 
implements with which our thought works — ay, and 
has to work ? 

Again, Hegel confronts the ordinary placid logic of 
self-consistency with his dialectic, alleging the latter 
to be the law governing every movement of thought. 
Mr. M'Taggart insists that when the dialectic is called 
objective, this need not mean that any superhuman 
mind, nor yet that any impersonal and Pantheistic 
unity of thought, passes in historical succession through 
the phases which the Logic records. Mr. M'Taggart 
goes further. He suggests that the Logic describes 
the path only of human thought — thought which has 
to " tack " 1 — not of [Divine ?] thought, which marches 
straight to its goal. Or it describes what the process 
seems as we pass through it ; not what it is, and shows 

1 Studies, p. 146. 



136 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

itself on retrospect. The present writer is more and 
more inclined to favour such a distinction in its former 
reading, if the distinction can be well established, and 
not merely assumed upon principles of scepticism by- 
asserting "relativity of [human] knowledge." Hegel, 
however, will not sympathise with this. " The man," 
he says, " who speaks of the merely finite, of merely 
human reason, and of the limits to mere reason, lies 
against the spirit." 1 Hegel would call such procedure 
dualistic. Probably he would also apply the same 
fatal epithet to Mr. M'Taggart's contrast of the dialectic 
process with its results. 

In speaking of Hegel's Logic in parallelism with 
other logics, we are therefore met hy the Dialectic, 
claiming to be the true law of thought. It may 
indeed be questioned whether there is any general 
formal principle binding together the whole of Hegel's 
Logic. Apparently Mr. M'Taggart would hold that 
there is not. On that view, the authority of the Logic 
rests upon the detailed transitions, and any general 
view of the nature of the process of advance is a 
matter for subsequent inductive discovery. Accord- 
ingly, Mr. M'Taggart's work largely consists in in- 
teresting views of different ways in which a dialectic 
transition, as Hegel conceives it, is possible, — some 
ways receding as we advance, others growing pro- 
minent. 2 And sometimes it is optional whether the 
transition shall be stated in terms of contrast or of 
similarity. In particular, it is only at the first triad — 
Being, Nothing, Becoming — that we have absolute 
unqualified opposition. Moreover, Mr. M'Taggart in- 

1 History of Philosophy, tran., vol. i. p. 74. 

2 See his quotation from Hegel, Dialectio, p. 121. 



THE HEGELIAN LOGIC 137 

sists that if we speak of Hegel as teaching progress 
by contradiction, we shall state clearly that the con- 
tradiction is not absolute and without relief — as it is 
in a Kantian or Hamiltonian antinomy. There would 
be self-contradiction if no higher thought- construction 
asserted itself, by means of which the old opposition 
may be merged and transcended (to take the simplest 
example, Becoming is the contrast and the synthesis of 
Being and Nothing). Walking is said to be a perpetual 
falling just arrested in time. Similarly, Mr. M'Taggart 
regards Hegel's Logic as perpetual self-contradiction, 
just converted day by day at the eleventh hour into 
reconciliation. Hence we are asked to believe that 
Hegel is less paradoxical than has been generally 
supposed. The correction may have some truth in it, 
but even Mr. M'Taggart offers no relief for the first and 
the hardest transition of all. We suspect that, as so 
often, Hegel is on both the opposite sides. He does 
assert progress by antagonism ; as we have said, con- 
trast is taken by him as the typical form of necessary 
connexion, latent in all others. But at the same time 
he does hold that the antagonism is perpetually merged. 
The most abstract and violent of all thinkable opposi- 
tions is an opposition within thought, and therefore in 
some sense not an opposition. It is the habitual " Yes 
and No" under cover of which the philosopher con- 
tinually evades us. " Others abide our question ; thou 
art free.' 5 Very similar is Hegel's attitude on the 
broader issue. There is a general principle or general 
formula in the Logic, whether, with Jowett, we take 
our name for it from the earliest example, and call it 
"the unity of Being and Nothing," or whether, like 
most interpreters, we take our name from the new 



138 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

group of categories added by Hegel to those of Kant, 
and call it " the Notion." But, on the other hand, it is 
perfectly true that Hegel claims to be judged on his 
detailed analysis of the conceptions through which we 
grasp reality. These seem as if they were alternative 
ways of enforcing or of testing the Logic; but 
characteristically Hegel insists upon both. He allows 
of no formal truth in any region unless we reach it 
through — or verify it in — an examination of all types 
of content. He does not maintain his great thesis — 
which, according to Mr. M'Taggart, consists in the 
assertion that "Reality is rational and righteous" 
— otherwise than by examining the characteristic con- 
cepts under which we grasp the real, and by show- 
ing that every one of them passes into or involves the 
idea of absolute system. This makes his writings 
singularly instructive. He has occasion to utter re- 
marks upon a whole encj^clopsedia of things. Also it 
makes his system burdensome and somewhat pre- 
carious. No chain is stronger than its weakest link. 
The chain of the Hegelian system is long ; it goes three 
times round the universe. It will be strange if there 
are no weak links in it. 

We now turn to the deeper aspect of Hegel's Logic : 
its metaphysical significance. Already, notably in the 
last paragraph, we have trenched upon this ground. 
And though Mr. M'Taggart's commentary, from its 
great clearness, is a serviceable introduction to Hegel's 
meaning, it is doubtful whether he does not explain 
away or keep out of sight much of the central diffi- 
culty. Hegel freely allows himself such language as 
" all reality is Thought." 1 Upon Mr. M'Taggart's own 

1 History of Philosojjhy, tran., vol. ii. p. 1. 



THE HEGELIAN LOGIC 139 

admission, the Logic implies that something exists } 
We should have thought it implied that something or 
that everything necessarily exists, and probably, too, 
that it necessarily is what it is. In any case, the 
Logic to Hegel is a necessary vision of reality. This is 
probably the central meaning and the central difficulty 
of his Idealism. 

More simply, Hegel is defining reality. He begins 
with the barest possible assertion of reality (It is ; it 
has quality; it has quantity). He passes on to the 
trap-laying categories of essence, which go in pairs (it 
is reality behind the appearances ; it is a thing with 
qualities ; it is a cause with effects ; highest of all here, 
it is a reciprocal system). Agnosticism waits upon the 
categories of the first group, lamenting, But we never 
know pure Being ! To which Hegel brusquely replies, 
Of course not, since Pure Being is pure Nothing. At 
the next stage, Agnosticism changes its ground. We 
meet with substances, it allows; but we only know 
their attributes ! Or, if we are allowed to speak of 
reciprocity, it is urged that reciprocal determination is 
self -contradictory, and that thought has lost its labour. 
Hegel seeks not merely to affirm, but to show that the 
thing is known in its qualities. He wishes not merely 
to make the obvious retort, but to " think " it. Un- 
happily (perhaps) he has recourse as usual to the 
dialectic method. He holds that thought need not and 
cannot pause at reciprocity. Behind the apparent 
plurality of forces or substances it must divine its own 
image in an underlying unity — such an all-pervading 
unity as we find in conscious thought with its notion, 
explicated into a form of opposition in the judgment, 
1 Hegelian Dialectic, p. 20. 



140 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

but recombined into the highest unity — conscious of 
difference but transcending it — in the syllogism or the 
" idea " strictly so called. Hence reality is a unity of 
elements like the unity of thought ; and " the idea 
which has existence is nature." 

This idea of system — expounded by us in an earlier 
chapter — Mr. M'Taggart seems to regard as the main 
burden or message of the Logic. Dr. E. Caird, however, 
finds in the Logic a further and fuller meaning. He tells 
us that its lowest third, the doctrine of Being, corre- 
sponds to ordinary unscientific thinking, which may 
be said to take things one at a time; the next, the 
doctrine of Essence, corresponds to science, " finite " 
science, which connects things together upon certain 
given presuppositions, showing the relation between 
thing and thing, but not reaching absolute unity, and 
not criticising its own categories; while the third 
stage, that of the Notion, is not merely the recognition 
of absolute unity or system, but the explicit reference 
of all things to thought and the discovery of unity 
there — in the highest sense, only there. And even Mr. 
M'Taggart finds also his own form of the reference of 
things to thought in the highest section of the Logic 
as well as [?] in the Philosophy of Spirit. The Logic 
forces us to regard things as a unity or system ; the 
Philosophy of Nature shows us that we have to pro- 
ject this system into space and time, and to recover it 
again from its apparent loss in the multiplicity of the 
phenomenal, or to verify it there once more under 
altered conditions ; the Ideal [and the Philosophy of 
Spirit ?] teach us to think of reality as (in its ultimate 
analysis) a communion between thinking spirits, and 
so essentially related to thought. In any case, the 



THE HEGELIAN LOGIC 141 

last third of the Logic compels us at least to think of 
things as a system. Hegel asserts that we must 
predicate absolute organic system, if we predicate 
anything at all. 

The way in which Hegel's proof of system runs can 
only be indicated. Beginning with the lowest affirma- 
tion that can be made regarding anything, the Logic 
seeks to show that we are inevitably driven on by a 
sort of logical parthenogenesis to the assertion of an 
absolute system ruled by perfect order and lucid to 
thought. In two ways Hegel tries to make this good. 
By the successive phases in which thought qualifies or 
defines reality, a system of reality or realities is con- 
stituted whose successive aspects are likewise (as 
already hinted) coexistent parts. But, secondly, the 
highest stage we reach — the Notion; or the highest 
phase in the Notion, the Idea — is itself the thought of 
an absolute system. 

Perhaps the Logic is best read for the first time as 
a study of different thoughts or aspects of reality. 
Hegel is extremely subtle and extremely original in 
his detail. His analysis is hair-splitting, if his syn- 
thesis is all-inclusive. One almost questions, on the 
side of analysis, whether it is fair to attach (for the 
moment) one definite meaning to a thought or a term. 
In real thinking and living speech, a term modifies 
itself according to the colour of its surroundings. We 
may be told that every compiler of a dictionary under- 
takes the same task. That is true in a sense ; but 
Hegel seeks to construct a dictionary of thoughts 
rather than words. The ordinary lexicographer follows 
the guidance of usage. If a usage were never so in- 
correct at first, custom hallows it. Hegel, on the con- 



142 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

trary, tells us not only what the successive terms 
imply, but what they must imply. This metaphysical 
dictionary is plainly a dictionary with unusual 
features ! Then, too, Hegel largely constructs his 
terminology, and constructs it from purely Teutonic 
stems. Again, he is greatly addicted to punning 
etymologies, and even seems to attach a serious import- 
ance to them. Is not this significant? Amid the 
shifting quicksands of human speech, Hegel seeks for 
some bed-rock on which he may erect his exact deter- 
minations and definitions. The only thing which offers 
any promise of necessity is the etymological deriva- 
tion, real or supposed, of a word. Further, this singular 
dictionary coheres throughout. One meaning pervades 
it from first to last. Each term interprets — i.e. more 
fully interprets — the one before it. The dictionary is 
a study after all of one " Logos " — but that Logos is 
the immanent reason in all things; the Notion; the 
Idea. Thus, if there is only one word in this dictionary, 
that word is or includes everything. It tells us " what 
God and what man is." 

On particular "categories" of thought Hegel's 
teaching is brilliant and conclusive. For an instance 
we might take the perplexing and entangling twofold 
determinations of " essence." Does not Hegel lead us 
behind the illusions associated with these when he 
shows us the categories in questions as creations of 
thought, and necessary working implements, but yet 
imperfect ? On the one hand, we know the substance 
through the accidents. On the other hand, it is an 
imperfect view of reality which conceives it as a multi- 
plicity of parts, each revealing a multiplicity of char- 
acters. It is imperfect, one might say, but necessary 



THE HEGELIAN LOGIC 143 

because of our finitude — we cannot grasp the whole as 
a whole. Hegel takes a bolder flight, and says, It is 
an imperfect way of thinking, and therefore of itself 
necessarily passes into one more perfect. Substance 
must become subject — a thought-unity, which breaks 
itself up manifestly into its own particulars, which is 
itself and its opposite and the unity of both. The real 
is the individual which combines or presupposes the 
mere universal (of " thought ") and the mere particular 
(of " sense "). 1 Or, the real is the individual, since in 
reality there can be no such thing as mere thought or 
mere sense. These are the two sides of the shield, 
absolutely implying each other, absolutely not two but 
one in the higher potencies and to the deeper insight 
of living speculative thought. Still further, Hegel 
holds that things which we quite legitimately treat as 
substances are really sub specie cetemitatis phases or 
rather stages, through which the subject fulfils itself as 
a subject. 

Again, Hegel offers a striking contribution to 
thought in his doctrine of the Infinite — another term 
with which the self- stultifying wisdom of the Agnostic 
" understanding " is never weary of making play. 
Thus we are told that the Infinite is purely negative, 
that it is plainly unknowable, and so forth. Hegel 
meets these views with a resolute and reasoned denial. 
He begins by distinguishing in quality a false infinite, 
which is the mere negation of the finite. [The first 
suggestion of the Infinite to thought is that which has 
not the quality of finitude, rather than that which is 
non-finite in quantity.] However, Hegel has sub- 

1 Hegel, however, speaks of the particular as the "middle term," 
uniting the " extremes" of individual and universal. 



144 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

stantially the same criticism to pass upon both of the 
false infinites — the qualitative and the quantitative; 
and as the latter is the more familiar, we may pass to it 
at once. According to popular opinion, eternity is simply 
endless time, and infinitude is simply quantity without 
limit. Such an infinite is negative. It is a quantity 
which lacks the characteristic features of quantity. 
We can say nothing about it except that it is non- 
finite. It has nothing to do with the finite except to 
repel it. But our thought is guilty of error in regard- 
ing the Infinite thus. [More exactly, according to 
Hegel, we reach an inadequate approximation to the 
truth, and we have to pass through it and beyond it on 
our way to a fuller truth.] Really, the infinite is not 
the non-limited, but the self -limited. It is not out of 
relation ; it is self -relating and self -related. It is not 
undetermined, but self-determining or free. Over 
against it there is no strange limiting power ; it is at 
home in all things, recognising its own image every- 
where. Infinite and finite cannot simply lie alongside 
each other as contrasted opposites. Else they limit 
each other, and both are finite. The true infinite must 
be that of which the finite is a phase or function. But 
here again Hegel goes a step further. To him, finitude 
is not merely a function, but the function of the Infinite 
— its fulfilment and indeed its very essence sub specie 
temporis. As little as the world means anything with- 
out God, so little will Hegel allow God to mean 
anything without the world. We must admit that 
Hegel is true to himself in thus mercilessly pressing the 
idea of system — and of system as a unity of opposites 
which pass into each other. Yet we shrink with 
extreme repugnance from his doctrine. Perhaps it is 



THE HEGELIAN LOGIC 145 

speculative weakness in us; but we cannot see the 
dependence of infinite on finite as we see the depend- 
ence of finite on infinite. If the correlation and 
parallelism are so precise, what becomes of the 
contrast ? 

At other points the Logic sets before us difficulties 
which scarcely even seem to find relief. 

The first three terms, as most readers will know, 
are Being, Nothing, Becoming. Reality is ; but when 
you have said is you have spoken so vaguely as to say 
nothing at all ; you might as well have said is not. It 
is — it is not; these empty determinations are in a 
sense equivalents. Yet they are opposites ; and relief 
is found when we no longer say it is or it is not, but 
it becomes — or, in other words, having become it exists l 
(definitely). Now it is true enough that when Becom- 
ing is suggested it may be taken as a unity of Being 
and Nothing. At least one understands what is meant 
when that is said; though one might offer criticism. 
Science knows of no absolute beginning — of no transi- 
tion from Nonbeing to Being. Absolute Becoming is 
as purely an abstraction as absolute Being or absolute 
Nonbeing. (Also of course science knows nothing of 
annihilation.) One sees what is meant when Becoming 
is suggested ; but one does not see that there is any 
innate power in the summation of Being and Nothing 
to impel the mind to that leap forward. In themselves, 
opposite assertions merely cancel. — Another objection 
frequently taken seems to be less valid. Does Becoming 
imply time ? Nay, how should any expenditure of 
time bridge the absolute gulf which separates Non- 

1 Hegel employs the Teutonic form Daseyn at this point, using the 
Latin Existenz for one of the categories of "Essence." 



146 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

being from Being ? Perhaps there is an appeal to 
time, however, when Become is taken as has become — 
has quality — exists definitely. 1 — On the whole, we 
must surely agree that Being, Nothing, Becoming, while 
miraculously, not to say monstrously, ingenious, " will 
never ring quite true." 2 

Letting this serve as a specimen, perhaps an extreme 
one, of the difficultness and questionableness of Hegel's 
transitions, we pass to the end of the Logic, where we 
find features hardly less startling than those of the 
beginning. Why should the subj ective and psychological 
term, the Notion, be used ? We understand that Hegel 
is giving us progressive definitions — or, as he thinks, 
one progressive definition — of reality, and that, as the 
highest definition, he wishes to name a peculiarly 
intimate unity and harmony, a peculiarly close and 
well-knit system. But why call it Notion ? We have 
been speaking of the thought of Being, the thought of 
Becoming, etc. ; it is not the thought of a Notion, 
however, but thought as Notion, as Judgment, as 
Syllogism, that we are now asked to ponder. To write 
and think symmetrically, Hegel ought to name the 
kind of coherence which he thinks he traces in a 
" Notion " properly so called — perhaps " organic unity " 3 
— perhaps even " unity of consciousness." Speaking as 
he does, he is stealing a march, one fears, in the interests 
of idealism — in the interests even of that extreme 
phase of thought (or of speech) which informs us that 

1 Not the only way in which Hegel seeks to justify his further advance. 

2 Dr. Stirling, Schwegler, p. 475. 

3 Mr. M'Taggart holds that Hegel's names for categories are mere 
vague suggestions — "a unity such as this." But he also holds that 
Hegel now or shortly arrives at the position ' ' Reality is [nothing but] 
the experience of some thinker." 



THE HEGELIAN LOGIC 147 

nothing but thought exists. We are pushed in this 
direction, without explanation or argument. Ill-gotten 
gains do not prosper. Unexplained or unjustified 
idealist phraseology is likely to repel the learner 
from idealism in every form. 1 

Hegel's logical method has not been widely copied by 
his latter-day followers. Two able books in our own 
language, largely influenced by Hegel, illustrate this : 
Mr. Bradley's and Mr. Bosanquet's Logics. They do not 
indeed represent a simple growth or development of 
Hegelian principles. There have been other influences, 
and there has been original thinking. Indeed, Mr. 
Bradley at any rate cannot now be called a Hegelian 
except in a very indefinite sense. Still, these writers, 
like Hegel, manifest the attempt to show that reality is 
a system grasped by thought ; and we notice that their 
reasonings in support of this position are free from the 
more paradoxical elements of the Hegelian Logic. They 
do not start with a single thought and show that upon 
inspection it dissolves automatically into a complex 
of many thoughts, which recombine into an absolute 
unity. They start with the judgment. That is 
frankly taken as the minimum of thinking; and in 
judgment a system is explicit ; for a judgment contains 
a plurality of elements brought to a unity. 

Thereupon a further question arises — What is the 
relation of judgment to reality? A bad old logical 
tradition informs us that the judgment is simply the 

1 Hegel might urge that the only unity in which differences are 
absolutely at one is the unity of thought, which can move from one to 
the other — or, which must move from one to the other, and back upon 
itself. 



148 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

comparison of one thought with another. If that be 
true, a judgment need never come within ten thousand 
miles of reality, Nay, there is more to be said. Upon 
the view in question, a judgment cannot touch reality ; 
thought is confined to its own ghostly world. Here, 
once again, we have stumbled upon a trap which 
thought lays for thought. Mill was wiser than the 
champions of intuitionalism. With a fine defiance of 
his own metaphysics and his own psychology, he 
persisted in maintaining that judgments concerned 
reality. Mr. Bradley's keener analysis now holds that 
reality is the ultimate subject in every judgment, 
while the predicate is an ideal content. Thought is 
always healing the schism between reality and the 
ideal content by persevering in its task of predication, 
though — according to Mr. Bradley — the task is in the 
nature of things incapable of accomplishment. Mr. 
Bosanquet finds the reference to reality rather in the 
copula. We are concerned here to note that these 
modern Logics differ from Hegel in beginning with an 
explicit system of relations, while they agree with him 
in striving to make good the reference of thought to 
reality. 

NOTE. 

Contents of Hegel's Lesser Logic (omitting Introduction). 
I. Being. 

A. Quality. 

(a) Being. 

(b) Being determinate. 

(c) Being for self. 

B. Quantity 

(a) Mere Quantity. 
(6) Quantum, 
(c) Degree. 



THE HEGELIAN LOGIC 149 

C. Measure. 
II. Essence. 

A. Essence as ground of Existence. 

(a) The primary Categories of Reflection. 

(a) Identity. 

(p) Difference. 

(y) Ground. 
(6) Existence. 
(c) The Thing. 

B. Appearance. 

(a) Phenomenal World. 
(6) Content and Form, 
(c) Ratio (Relation). 

C. Actuality. 

(a) Relation of Substantiality. 

(b) Relation of Causality. 

(c) Reciprocity, or Action and Reaction. 
III. The Notion. 

A. The Subjective Notion. 

(a) The Notion as Notion. 
(6) The Judgment. 
(c) The Syllogism. 

B. The Object. 

(a) Mechanism. 
(&) Chemism. 
(c) Teleology. 
G. The Idea. 
(a) Life. 

(6) Cognition in general, 
(c) The Absolute Idea. 

The Larger Logic differs somewhat widely under Essence — not 
elsewhere. 



CHAPTER IX 

The Philosophy of Nature 

Literature. — Hegel's Lectures on this subject are not trans- 
lated. 

The Philosophy of Nature is generally admitted to be 
that part of his system in which Hegel shines the least. 
The admission, however, is recent. Hegel's admirers at 
the present day feel the necessity of lightening the 
ship ; but Michelet, the editor of the lecture notes for 
the posthumous Berlin edition, speaks in a very different 
tone. Out of the "dawn" of philosophy of nature, 
heralded by the " Dioscuri," Schelling and Hegel, " the 
full day of victorious truth has arisen in the heaven of 
science," and the Philosophy of Nature is " one of the 
noblest fruits ripened on the garland [sic] of these then 
budding- flowers." 1 Nor can we be considered mere 
resurrectionists if we refer again to forgotten and 
seemingly obsolete controversies on points of physical 
science or its theory. A great man's errors are signi- 
ficant: it is more respectful to study than to ignore 
them. It will be found that Hegel here gives us that 
opportunity of testing his principles which we hardly 
obtain in the field of history. And the Philosophy of 
Nature is an integral part of his system. If he has 

1 Editor's Preface, p. v. 
150 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 151 

erred in it, there is a margin of error to be allowed for 
throughout. 

On the other hand, it will be important to keep in 
view the naturalness and necessity of some sort of 
Philosophy of Nature in any constructive system of 
thought. Empiricist habits of mind urge us to believe 
that everything is merely given ; — it is so-and-so ; it 
might have been quite otherwise. And, for the pur- 
poses of science, it is enough to reach a basis of given 
fact. But where science ends philosophy has scarcely 
begun. We have still to ask whether it is credible 
that the Cosmos of nature reveals in itself none of the 
lineaments of reason. Is our world after all simply a 
heap of particulars, bound together by external associa- 
tion? Or has it not, even in its most material and 
most mechanical sections, traces of an ideal significance ? 
Not the Philosophy of Nature merely, but anything 
which deserves to be called philosophy, will answer the 
question with an unhesitating Yes. We may have less 
detail and less range of a priori certainty than Hegel ; 
but we shall have something corresponding to this 
section of his work ; and it will be strange if we do 
not draw our materials in part from him. 

The method Hegel adopts is the same dialectic method 
which rules in the Logic. This is stated in so many 
words by the editor, Michelet. 1 " In a phenomenon, we 
are to find the idea, or the nature of the thing ... by 
the measured path of self -moving and dialectically pro- 
gressive thought." The same position is implied in the 
emphasis which Hegel still lays upon antagonism in 
this new region. Time is the opposite of Space [in 

1 Preface, p. xiii. 



152 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

Space per se nothing changes and nothing affects its 
neighbour; whereas in Time nothing lasts, — the past 
is dead, the future unborn, the present an imaginary 
line] ; there are " elements " of opposition [modern 
science would discuss the " elements " — earth, air, water 
— as " states of matter," or not at all], and there are 
" qualities of opposition " in the qualities of matter 
[in contrast with the qualities-of-relation-to-light, we 
have the "opposition" qualities of smell, which is a 
specialised airiness — i.e. scents are regarded as gases 
— and taste, which is a specialised water — i.e. to be 
tasted food must be dissolved. The higher unity in 
this region is — electricity !]. The importance of Hegel's 
adherence to this method consists in the fact that it 
leads him to claim apodictic certainty for all his results. 
We think his method a play of fancy on the part of a 
man of genius — a man profoundly gifted and widely 
learned, though very unequally endowed in different 
directions. Hegel thinks his method, here as every- 
where, the scientific organon of absolute truth. 

But, we ask, is it really possible for a deductive pro- 
cess of thought to define with absolute necessity this 
or that in nature — everything in nature (in broad out- 
line), or even anything? Here Hegel and his editor 
both meet us with the same distinction. According to 
Michelet, "Philosophy deduces not immediately the 
forms of nature as such, but certain relations of 
thought which belong to nature, for which it then 
seeks the corresponding perceptions in the circle of 
natural phenomena." He explains that both Space and 
Time are deduced in a sense, yet not determined as 
Space or as Time except with the help of empirical 
knowledge; the order, however — first Space then Time — 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 153 

is an absolute dialectical necessity. He goes on to deal 
with an obvious difficulty. "If an idea deduced a 
priori should find no corresponding percept, two ways 
are open to us : either to supply in this empty division 
an as yet undiscovered empirical phenomenon — a 
dangerous policy (says Michelet) though often made 
use of by Oken — or to throw the thought-determina- 
tion back into the crucible of Dialectic, and out of the 
matrix of Reason," etc. etc. ; in fact, to try again. 
" For the philosopher may have been guilty of an 
error in the process of thought by admixture of his 
own individuality, instead of following the straight 
path of universal and creative thought, which lies, un- 
consciously to us, in every breast." If Schelling com- 
plains that this boasted productive thought has not 
created so much as one blade of grass but only thoughts, 
Michelet replies, " Yes — only what is universal, abiding 
and alone of value ; not the individual, sensuous, tran- 
sient." 1 So Hegel tells us that " empirical physics " 
are " the presupposition and condition of the philoso- 
phical science!' and that "besides indicating the object 
according to its ideal significance, we must further 
name the empirical phenomenon which corresponds to 
it, and prove that it really does correspond. But this," 
he adds, " is not dependence on experience in relation to 
the necessity of the content." 2 This odd and unexpected 
dualism is apparently connected by Hegel with the 
presence of contingency in nature. Michelet's words 
quoted above make that very manifest, and we shall 
shortly quote Hegel's own utterance on the point. Is 
it fair to seek help from the doctrine of natural con- 
tingency ? Is the difficulty in question peculiar to 

1 P. XV. 2 P. 11. 



154 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

the Philosophy of Nature — or even, more indefinitely, 
peculiar to the applications of the Logic ? Do we not 
everywhere, even in the Logic, find a gap between what 
is suggested (or, as it is called, " deduced ") a priori and 
what is realised as Idea or as higher empirical Fact ? 
It appears to the present writer that " Deduction " never 
gets beyond the vague recommendation, " Can't you 
state this differently ? " or " Can't you try the opposite 
of this — what would it be ? " Then the humble Vor- 
stellung (in plain English, experience) whispers, Try 
so-and-so; whereupon the philosopher shouts aloud, 
"Deduced again — so-and-so it is." Quantity, e.g., is 
deduced in the Logic as non-quality ; but except for 
specific experience of quantitative phenomena, what 
alchemy could extract the positive contents of quantity 
from negation of quality ? It was the Vorstellung 
here as usual that saved a difficult situation. It was 
experience that whispered to the philosopher, Try 
Quantity. The difference is that Hegel confesses in 
Nature a difficulty which he ignores in Logic. He has 
owned that he does not deduce Space, Time, Matter, etc., 
but only their ideal analogues ; and in so far he has 
attenuated his paradox. He admits and asserts de- 
pendence on experience. He is not proposing to tell 
us what is — only in flawless series what must be. 
Experience tells us quite fully what is, yet under the 
condition that what is has to embody stage by stage 
the necessary categories laid down by thought. Surely 
this is incoherent. Surely the dialectic process would 
be available only for omniscience, or for a perfected 
vision of the last results of future science. On the 
other hand, it is probable that omniscience, with its 
genuine and unbounded resources, would not care to 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 155 

make use of so ingenious and artificial a device as this 
method of Hegel's. 

We may for our own purposes divide our study of 
the Philosophy of Nature between three questions : 
First, How do you get into it ? How do you justify 
the fact that the perfect thought-system of the Notion, 
or (at its highest phase) the Absolute Idea, transforms 
itself into a material manifold in Time and Space ? 
Secondly, How can you verify the presence of ration- 
ality in what seems opposed to reason — what seems no 
better than dead matter ? Thirdly, Can you show that, 
in successive stages, nature reveals itself as more and 
more life-like or thought-like, until it transcends itself 
in finite mind ? 

The first question points us to one of the mauvais 
pas in the Hegelian philosophy. Yet, difficult as it is, 
it was necessary for Hegel to try the passage. His 
principles and methods compelled him to do so. In 
relation to Kant, as noted above, this difficulty corre- 
sponds to the question of the connexion between the 
^Esthetic and the Analytic in the Critique of Pure 
Reason. Kant left the two in sharp unexplained con- 
trast ; Hegel is pledged to bridge the gulf. Kant implied 
that no reason could be assigned why reality should be 
thought or perceived by man under the forms of Time 
and Space; Hegel asserts that, just as it is logically neces- 
sary to think all things as parts of a system which is 
created by thought, so, too, it is an absolute logical 
necessity to think reality (and at one stage to think 
all reality) as an existence in Time and Space. We 
must think the finite as not simply an utterance, but 
the utterance of the infinite. Of course this is not the 



156 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

last or highest finding of reason. Time and Space 
determinations occupy only a few stages in the Pilgrim's 
Progress of the thinker. To the Philosophy of Nature 
will succeed in due time the Philosophy of Spirit ; and 
from that final point of view Time and Space will be 
in their turn transcended. For the present, however, 
if we are to trace Reason in all things, we must trace it 
in that apparently hard and alien necessity, which 
throws the self-centred system of reality into the 
boundlessness of space and endlessness of time, and 
which defines it (provisionally) as (dead) matter. Per- 
haps the best point made by Hegel is the apparent 
absoluteness of contrast between thought on the one 
hand and matter on the other. The two, nevertheless, 
are parts of one universe. Is not this a crucial proof 
that the law of dialectic contrast corresponds to real 
facts ? 

Well may Hegel say that this transition — though 
dictated, if we are to believe him, by the same dialectic 
process which gave us the Logic — differs from the 
individual transitions within the Logic. They added 
touch upon touch to the picture by which reality, at 
first indicated as bare unqualified Being, was construed 
as an absolute system. This new transition, on the 
contrary, bids us forget all we have learned about 
system. It bids us think of reality as a bare side by 
side plurality of atoms in space, a bare one-after-the- 
other multiplicity of moments in time. 

The method by which the transition is justified is 
delightfully simple. Just because Space or Nature 
seems so unlike thought — therefore of course it had to 
come. It is the other of thought. " Internality," accord- 
ing to Dr. H. Stirling, becomes " Externality." On this 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 157 

we may offer the same comment which we have already 
made upon a similar statement. There would be no 
force in calling thought Internal, unless we had know- 
ledge of that peculiar kind of Externality which we 
call material or spatial. Properly, Internal and Exter- 
nal are both space-terms, referring to space relations. 
They describe what is inside or outside a given limit or 
area. It is, as usual, by a metaphor that we transfer 
to thought a term characterising the external world ; 
in this case, the word Internal. All that we thus 
accomplish is the defining of thought as a region where 
space-determinations are not applicable. After we have 
described thought as "non-spatial," then of course we 
can characterise space — twenty times over, if we like — 
as the negative contrast to thought. But the definition 
is borrowed from experience, and is in no true sense 
the result of " dialectic " deduction. 

Another peculiarity in Hegel's statement is due to 
the rigorously serial character of his dialectic. He is 
not content with anything so humble as the position, 
" we must conceive reality " — or even as the position, 
" we must conceive all things — in space." Nay more ; 
it is not enough for him to say, " All is in space." 
Hegel's position is, " All is space " ; " Reality is space." 
Every existence, logical, material, or spiritual, disappears 
for the moment. We are left with the great blank empti- 
ness of space before us, that we may thoroughly take 
it in. Then there follows by the law of contrast — we 
tried above to give a hint of the reasoning by which Space 
and Time are induced to pair off as complementary 
opposites — " all is Time " ; and for a negation of the 
negation we have, " All is motion " ; [but there must be 
something to move, and so] " All is matter " ; — and we 



158 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

may breathe again [You may think away all matter, 
but you cannot think away space ; yet space is a mere 
potentiality whose actuality is matter. Space is the 
place where matter may be]. 

Once more; this last transition, if no other, surely 
implies that inference from Thought to Being which Mr. 
M' Taggart so courageously tries to eliminate from 
Hegel. The mystic formula at the end of the Logic, 
perhaps, may be construed in different ways. But who 
can doubt Hegel's meaning in these sections of the 
Philosophy of Nature ? The movement from thought 
to material being breaks up into two — (l)from thought 
to empty time and empty space, (2) from the idea of 
these back to matter. The latter is nothing else than 
the dreaded mauvais pas, and we are called upon to 
attempt it, to an accompaniment of jeers from our guide 
at the cowardice of those who dislike it. Here surely, 
if nowhere else, the comfortable substratum of reality 
which Mr. M c Taggart assumes in Hegel deserts us and 
leaves us in the void. Had Hegel been content to say, 
" All is in Space," we should still have had our all of 
reality to hang our predicates upon; and if many 
predicates were lost to sight [if " absolute system " had 
turned into " endless side-by-side and endless series "], 
we might hope to recover them again later on. But if 
all is space — why, then, all is gone; or all is empti- 
ness. The clearance is as thorough as when Being 
turns into Nothing — a paradox which Mr. M' Taggart 
seems to dislike, but yet to excuse as happening only 
once, and happening when thought is so young. 

Whatever congruities and fitnesses thought may dis- 
cover in a Time and Space world, we are persuaded 
that thought never can " deduce " Time and Space. Its 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 159 

attempts to construe them are like the blind man's 
comparison of the colour scarlet to "the sound of a 
trumpet " — rhetorically telling and suggestive, but 
empty of substance ; Vorstellung and not in the very 
faintest degree Begriff. Here surely is one of the 
points where we must be content with a knowledge 
which seems to be absolutely given as a mere opaque 
fact. If we come better speed with the remaining ques- 
tions belonging to the Philosophy of Nature, that must 
satisfy us. At the present point we meet with a limit 
to possible explanation whose transcendence is unthink- 
able. At the present point we find one of the proofs 
which make it plain that thought in us is not fully 
identical with absolute thought, but represents the 
working of thought under a certain finite mode. God, 
or the absolute intelligence, must think the world of 
Time and Space, but cannot think it, as we have to do, 
in Time and Space — i.e. with an indefinite unexplored 
fringe beyond the possibilities of accurate knowledge. 

But Hegel has another way of making his transition 
or of stating an answer to the first of our three ques- 
tions. The passage into Nature is not only from 
Thought to Space, but from Necessity to Contingency. 
It has been remarked 1 that he vacillates in his treat- 
ment of the idea of contingency. Sometimes it is 
presented as a category or thought- definition, worthy 
to stand beside any others (and if thought moves by 
contrasts, how should the supreme contrast of all- — 
irrationality versus the rational — fail to find a place in 
the natural history of thought ?). Sometimes Hegel 
treats contingency as attaching indefinitely to all 
1 M'Taggart's Studies in Hegelian Dialectic, p. 65. 



160 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

non-logical portions of his philosophy. The individual, 
either in nature or in history, is "contingent," and 
therefore plainly cannot be " deduced." We can only 
deduce the " universal." 

This may perhaps have a good sense read into it. 
There may be evidence showing that all our thought is 
" hypothetical " in Mr. Bradley's sense — i.e. is general. 
But that position seems hardly legitimate within a 
Philosophy of Nature which " deduces " the solar 
system along with Kepler's laws, and which at great 
length expounds the nature of earth as the supreme 
" organic individual." For good or for evil, Hegel has 
identified his work with a different theory. The 
"science" which he expounds is not merely abstract 
but historical — it is at least worth investigating, 
whether he has not mixed up without sufficiently 
contrasting two very distinct species of science. Be 
that as it may, he has certainly treated the individual 
as significant, deducible, demonstrable. And therefore 
his repudiation of the " contingent individual," where 
repudiation is convenient for the course of his argu- 
ments, awakens deep distrust. The present writer has 
no faith in the scientific worth of the dialectic method 
in any region of philosophy. But if it is to pass 
muster, how can its patrons assert that there is a limit 
beyond which it is inapplicable ? " The contradiction 
of the idea, grown external to itself as nature, may be 
more closely defined as follows : on one side, nature 
necessarily arises from the notion of its several forms 
and of the rational unity of these in an organic whole ; 
on the other side, nature implies indifferent contingency 
and indefinable lawlessness. Contingency and deter- 
mination from the outside have their rights in the 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 161 

sphere of nature. . . . The impotence of nature shows 
itself in its maintaining only in the abstract the de- 
terminations of the notion, while leaving details to 
be filled in by forces external to the individual. . . . 
The impotence of nature sets limits to philosophy. It 
is most perverse to ask of the notion that it should 
conceive, construe, deduce such contingent existences." 
A footnote adds that if philosophy had no more work 
to do on great themes, one might give Herr Krug the 
hope that his writing-quill would have the glory of 
being " deduced " in due time. 1 A distinguished 
teacher of the past generation was maliciously repre- 
sented as saying, What I don't know isn't knowledge. 
That, in all sobriety, is Hegel's attitude towards 
individual phenomena. What he can't deduce isn't 
worth deducing. This, as we observed before, 2 is an 
unexpected outcrop of dualism. Whether or not this 
contemptuous view of the individual phenomenon is 
compatible with the claim to produce an absolute 
philosophy, 3 it is plainly incompatible with Hegel's 
monism, and therefore is a bad excrescence on the 
symmetry of his thought. On all accounts it is to be 
rejected. We know one teacher who believed in the 
significance of individual sparrows and even of indi- 
vidual hairs. And we have need of modesty enough to 
conclude that our failures to solve a problem do not 
prove the problem to be necessarily trifling or unreal, 
but only prove that our powers are limited. The 
theory of the meaningless individual is one more 
doctrine of sour grapes. 

If it be pleaded, alternatively, that Hegel is entitled 
to impute contingency to nature as being the other or 

1 P. 36. 2 Chap. III. p. 34. 3 P. 34, and note there. 

II 



1 62 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

contrast of reason, we must assent to the criticism that 
such a position proves too much. We have deduced 
and justified abstract unreason, have we ? Then why- 
continue reasoning — and reasoning upon such themes ? 

We now pass to the second question (in our own 
division of the subject), namely, whether we can trace 
the lineaments of reason in the strange territory of 
material nature. 

Here the obvious answer is, that the order of nature 
— or, to use a less ambiguous expression, the uniformity 
of causation — is rational. (Would keen enough thought 
show us that uniform causation necessarily implies pheno- 
menal regularity — or, say, cycle — in nature as a whole, 
regarded as the joint product of many co-operating 
causes ? That is, at any rate, not immediately evident. 
Hence it is rather an exaggeration to say 1 that on a 
positive reading of Kant, world and soul are identi- 
fied, and are regarded as the same material differently 
viewed. Compare supra, p. 116.) It is a saying of 
Huxley's 2 that the course of nature is " a materialised 
logical process." Is not that a significant bit of 
Philosophy of Nature in a rather unexpected quarter ? 
We presume it was causal order which led Huxley to 
speak thus. This aspect of things — this knowable 
Kantian world of substance, causality, and reciprocity 
— is expounded to the English reader with great 
ability in Mill's Logic. Mill, of course, held that the 
uniform sequence of causation was simply a fact found 

1 E.g., in Professor A. Setli's early and brilliant Philosophy as 
Criticism of Categories, see p. 116, supra. 

2 I only know this as a quotation, e.g., in Ritchie's Darwin and Hegel, 
p. 87. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 163 

good so far, believed in, generalised by custom, but 
liable to break down below our feet at any moment. 
Still, his Logic points the intelligent reader to a much 
better Metaphysic and Philosophy of Nature than 
Mill's own. Mechanism and mind, which Lotze so 
sharply antagonises, answer to each other like the seal 
and the wax. Because nature is mechanically deter- 
mined, mind anchors itself to nature's permanent 
substances, supports itself on nature's orderly processes, 
and so maintains unbroken the unity of consciousness. 
Unfortunately, Hegel is so preoccupied with his 
obsession about contingency, that he never lays much 
emphasis upon this notable regularity of nature — unless 
under the name of mechanism, of which we have to 
speak shortly. 

There is another and a particularly unfortunate 
recognition of rationality in nature when Hegel sallies 
forth to defend Goethe's theory of colour, and to attack 
Newton's theory, Newton's intellectual competence, and 
even Newton's character. Colour, like everything else, 
must be a unity of opposites. This is secured on 
Goethe's theory, which makes colour a synthesis of 
light and darkness ; it is forfeited by Newton's use of 
"the worst of all forms of reflective thinking, [the 
category of] composition," by his " lack of skill," his 
" silliness," his " dishonourableness," his " blunders," 
and the " simplicity " and " incapacity " of the scientific 
judgment of the time. 1 Even Newton's advance from 
Kepler's laws to the theory of gravitation is described 
as a very poor thing, and German feeling is invoked 
against the foreigner. 2 " The only difference is that 
what Kepler stated in a simple and noble fashion as 
1 Pp. 303-307. 2 P. 110. 



1 64 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

laws of celestial motion, Newton changed into the 
reflective form of the Force of Gravitation, and of 
gravity manifesting the law of its magnitude in 
falling." 1 Now we do not deny the right of philo- 
sophy to scrutinise the methods of science, and to raise 
deeper questions. If Hegel had merely done that, his 
mistakes, if he erred, would have been pardonable. 
But he has gone much farther. He has challenged 
Newton's work in its own region ; and, while professing 
to serve the objective truth of " the notion," he has 
appealed to vulgar prejudice. What can we conclude 
except — in his own vigorous language — that he has 
given an exhibition of "lack of skill," "silliness," 
" dishonourableness," and " blunders " ? 

The answer to our third question introduces us to 
the main drift of Hegel's Philosophy of Nature. We 
may prefer the language of a part of the Logic 
(Mechanism, Chemism, Teleology) to that of the Philo- 
sophy of Nature (Mechanics — Physics, with chemistry 
as a subdivision — Organics). But the general drift is 
the same either way. And if, in entering the Philo- 
sophy of Nature, Hegel was seeking to exhibit a 
rational connexion between the ^Esthetic and the 
Analytic of Kant's great work, here he is using materials 
furnished by the Critique of Judgment, as well as 
materials inherited from Schelling. Life, we have 
said, is the Achilles' heel in a consistently materialistic 
or mechanical view of nature — life, and, still more, 
thought. Hence a thoroughgoing materialism tends 
to assert not simply that consciousness sprang from 
matter by a kind of accident, but that there is no such 
1 P. 99. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 165 

thing as consciousness (for mind must not be allowed 
to affect matter ; and if mind receives influences from 
matter without reciprocating, what has become of our 
logic ?). The conclusion, if paradoxical, is acceptable to 
materialists. On the other hand, the Philosophy of 
Nature, believing in mind, wishes to trace lower terms 
in the same series — transitional forms between the ex- 
ternality and indifference of mechanical matter and the 
self-centredness of life and thought. In spite of the 
serious objections of Professor Royce, we believe that the 
attempt is legitimate and wise. But once more we 
distrust Hegel's parade of a necessary development. 
Let it be enough for us to recognise that things do in 
point of fact appear in a certain rising scale. We 
cannot say with any width of reference how things 
must be, until we know the whole of that which 
science is destined to discover. 

Mechanism is the mode of existence which char- 
acterises mere or inorganic matter as such. We spoke 
in Chapter II. of Hegel's considering a magnet and still 
more an organism as revealing the nature of reality 
better than an aggregate can do. In nature, however, 
the primary aspect of things which we have to face 
is that of the aggregate in which the parts are neutral 
to each other, and determine the whole by mere sum- 
mation. The "flower in the crannied wall" can be 
studied without a knowledge of God or of man. We 
can specialise. We can make ourselves creditable 
coleopterists and accomplished scarabeeists while stone- 
blind to God and deaf to the cries of the human 
soul. On other terms, how could knowledge exist in 
finite minds ? If we were confronted with the im- 
possible task of summing a divergent series, we must 



166 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

die in infantile ignorance. These considerations do 
not suffice to " deduce " mechanism — the signature of 
reason in parts of nature more plainly than in the 
whole. They do not show it to be involved in the 
nature of thought. But, assuming time and space as 
given, and taking for granted the postulate that 
knowledge is to be possible, we show that mechanism 
is involved. In other words, we adhere to Kant's 
Transcendental method. Human thought is enabled 
by the existence of mechanism to " abstract." It takes 
one part at a time, and it regards the remainder of 
nature as a neutral background. This assumption is 
perhaps in no case strictly true; no such thing may 
exist as absolute unqualified mechanism. But the 
assumption is at least nearly enough true to work 
upon. For the moment, the remainder may be 
neglected. 

If this ceased to be the case, we could no longer 
envisage matter in space — parts outside of parts. 
Wherever space is found, there in a sense we have 
mechanism before us. 

It may seem a different view of mechanism if we 
say that it implies determination from without. Yet 
probably this is no more than another facet of the 
same truth. If we determine that which is mechanical, 
placing it in relations, the determinations necessarily 
present themselves as falling outside of its inner 
nature. Or — more strictly, perhaps — what is mechan- 
ical has no inner nature. 1 

1 Lotze's discussion, praised in Ormond's Foundations of Knowledge, 
according to which relation implies some deeper and more inward 
bond, is advanced precisely in the interests of the view that on the 
final analysis mechanism has no place in reality. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 167 

A second stage is represented by a force like 
gravitation, which, while nothing more than a cause 
of motion, implies a nearer approach to systematic 
unity than can be seen in the mere push and thrust 
of mechanism strictly so called. The same view seems 
to hold good of those energies — light, heat, sound, 
electricity — which are now explained as undulations 
or modes of motion. 

In chemistry, where we come upon transformations, 
the relatedness of the material elements manifests 
itself more plainly. They disappear in the process; 
they lose their qualities and acquire new ones. They 
are no longer independent parts linked in a casual 
co-operation; they are elements in a synthesis; they 
had been forcibly sundered, but have now come to- 
gether again. Yet even the new synthesis is not 
absolute. Chemistry therefore introduces us to a 
cosmos of related elements, transforming themselves 
in the most unexpected fashion, yet always according 
to law. On the other hand, even chemistry does not 
abolish mechanism. A chemical transformation pro- 
ceeds and concludes itself upon a neutral background 
of unmodified nature. Without relatively inert sub- 
stances out of which we might fashion our implements, 
no experimental knowledge of chemistry could arise. 
Without a stable staging of solid earth, liquid rains, 
and unexplosive atmosphere, there could be no delicate 
poising like that of the forces and processes which 
chiefly interest us — those of Life. Given these con- 
stants, we can study one aspect of chemistry at a 
time. Our chemical knowledge, too, implies this quasi- 
mechanical assumption. 

In the higher region of organic life we are intro- 



168 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

duced to transformations and processes in which the 
individuality of the whole is not lost but preserved. 
Primarily, of course, we cannot say that all nature is 
organic or alive. Primarily, life is presented in ex- 
perience as the quality of a few things, which live in 
a largely non-living and inorganic environment. 
Perhaps we shall not err if we say that here we find 
the mechanical point of view asserting itself even in 
organics. It is a more difficult speculative question 
whether it is possible to assert the livingness of reality 
in any wider sense. So far, what we have rapidly 
indicated is this — that in nature, where all things 
have the aspect of lying alongside each other in 
complete mutual indifference, or, at the most, with 
casual and contingent relations connecting them to- 
gether, we yet find in the course of further study 
ever-increasing traces of connexion between the 
moving bodies of space. We do not affect, like Hegel, 
to show that this growing connectedness must come 
to light by a " logical " necessity. We find, however, 
that it is ; and it seems impossible to deny that it is 
significant. 

We said a little ago that the discovery of reason in 
things in the form of causal law was enforced by 
Mill's philosophy A newer type of English Natural- 
ism, represented by Mr. Herbert Spencer and his 
friends, calls our attention to this other manifestation 
of rationality in the material cosmos — to this evolu- 
tionary emergence of unity or system or connectedness 
in what had seemed mere plurality and contingency. 
Is scientific evolutionism anything to the point? i.e. 
Is there any ideal significance in the fact — if it be a 
fact — that the higher forms of nature have arisen 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 169 

successively in a time process by natural causation? 
It is quite a different question whether, supposing 
evolution to be a natural process, we can regard Mr. 
Spencer's account of the factors of evolution, or any 
other purely naturalistic philosophy, as a true or 
adequate interpretation of the facts of science. The 
present writer does not think that Mr. Spencer's merits 
in the region he has made his own are comparable to 
those of J. S. Mill in his region. According to Mr. 
Spencer, the significant thing in evolution is increasing 
complexity — though the definition is crossed and inter- 
sected by others of an incompatible tenor. 1 The really 
significant thing, we take it, is that the lifeless (or the 
seemingly lifeless) has become alive, and that finite 
mind has appeared. 

Now Hegel viewed such speculations with strong 
disapproval. 2 He interdicts them in the name of the 
Notion. Nature, he tells us, is to be regarded as a 
"system of stages, one of which necessarily proceeds 
from the other, and is the proximate truth of the one 
from which it results, but not so that the one is 
naturally produced out of the other — only in the inner 
idea which constitutes the ground [and foundation] of 
nature. Metamorphosis belongs only to the Notion 
as such; its change alone is development. But the 
Notion exists in nature only [in imperfect fashions], 
partly as mere inward, and partly as the individual 
animal. The latter therefore alone has the capacity 

1 The author has tried to work out this criticism in Chapter IX. of 
From Comte to Benjamin Kidd. 

2 Hegel even prefers the conception of emanation to that of evolution 
— possibly, as Professor Ritchie suggests, because he thinks it points 
to interpreting earlier stages by later. 



170 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

of actual metamorphosis." He adds : " It is a foolish 
blunder, though well known both in the ancient and 
the recent study of Natural Philosophy, to regard the 
continuance and transition of one natural form and 
sphere into a higher as an actual and external process 
of production — which, however, for the sake of clear- 
ness, is always pushed well into the darkness of the 
past. Nature is precisely that externality which 
allows differences to fall asunder and present them- 
selves to view as separate existences indifferent to 
each other. The dialectic notion which leads from 
stage to stage is the inner force of nature. Real 
thought must reject such nebulous and essentially 
sensuous fancies, especially the alleged origination of 
plants and animals from water, and also the subsequent 
origination of the higher animals from the lower." 1 
Hegel's position is plain. " Metamorphosis belongs 

1 P. 32. It may be of interest, in view of our frequent references to 
Tennyson's "Flower in the crannied wall," to subjoin Hegel's 
characterisation of the vegetable as such : "The subjectivity, according 
to which the organic exists as an individual being, develops itself into 
an objective organism, the Form as a Body, which divides itself into 
limbs, or parts distinct from each other. In the plant, the only first 
immediate form of livin guess, its objective organism and its subjectivity 
are still immediately identical. Hence the processes of the self-differen- 
tiation and self-maintenance of the vegetable subject are a coining-out 
of self and a division into several individuals. The whole organism is 
rather the soil in which the parts live than their subjective unity. The 
part — bud, twig, etc. — is also [capable of becoming?] the whole plant. 
Hence, too, the difference of the organic parts is a mere superficial 
metamorphosis, and one can easily assume the functions of the other." 
So far as I understand this somewhat tall talk, it seems to assume — (1) 
that no plants feel, (2) that all animals feel. Or, in other words, it 
seems to hold good scientifically of the lowest animals equally with 
plants. Perhaps every "speculative" definition of the plant qua 
plant would incur similar difficulties. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 171 

only to the Notion as such/' and the patent rights 
of thought must not be infringed. Hegel is willing 
to hail the destructive forces of nature as a mani- 
festation of the power of the Notion. Living things 
die, and all things change, because they are, each and 
all, only finite. But new constructive determinations 
cannot be permitted to occur by natural process. The 
laboratory of reason is needed for securing such 
products. 

Here Hegel plainly was in error; and yet it is 
possible to suggest at least partial defences. The 
fixity of nature, even if only a relative thing, still 
affords a marked contrast to the progressiveness of 
the human mind. Progress may be hailed as — 

"man's peculiar note, 
Not God's 1 and not the beasts' ; God is ; 1 they are ; 
Man partly is and wholly hopes to be." 

Again, we might point out the danger of exaggerat- 
ing the significance of a theory of natural evolution. 
It assumes so many fixed and given data — Space and 
Time and Matter with its states, and Heat and 
Gravitation and the other physical forces. These are 
the extensive stock-in-trade with which evolutionary 
science — or evolutionary naturalism, which is science 
masquerading as philosophy — undertakes to explain 
the universe. They might, of course, many of them, 
be latent or confined to elementary manifestations in 
the fiery cloud to which a speculative science leads us 
back. Generally, indeed, in a relative sense, the simple 
may precede the complex. But for the sake of theory 

1 It is scarcely necessary to point out how very unHegelian Browning 
is here. 



172 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

naturalism (in the hands of Mr. Spencer) makes 
everything absolute. He points us to an "unstable 
homogeneity/' which seems as mere an abstraction as 
Hegel's Pure Being — with the considerable difference 
that, while Hegel knows pure Being for an abstraction, 
Mr. Spencer regards his Homogeneous as a historical 
fact. Is it not mythology rather than science which 
interprets the ideal relations and conditions of things 
as events in an imaginary history, "pushed for the 
sake of clearness well into the darkness of the past " ? 
Why nature as a whole ever took the trouble of 
becoming absolutely homogeneous one cannot conceive, 
especially as, having become so, it had, we are told, 
to quit that position at once. Is the synthetic philo- 
sophy really to be trusted ? Has matter actually 
gone through its paces in orderly sequence, one after 
another, beginning with the goose step, for the con- 
venience of the contemplating philosopher? Is this 
evolution a historical fact, or is it theory run mad ? 
Process, relative and contingent, to which facts point 
back, is one thing. Process, absolute and necessary, 
which theory postulates, is another thing entirely — 
the bad kind of a priori. 1 

When we consider the appearance of life in the 
higher animals and man, we find this result: those 
undulations which had existed in nature hitherto only 
as undulations, now for the first time come to exist as 
colours and sounds. It is true that not all the modes 
of motion become direct psychical consciousnesses. If 

1 Nothing has been said of Darwinism, for in spite of Professor 
Ritchie's insistence on the phrase " struggle for existence," the present 
writer considers it not only hopeless but absurd to treat Darwinism as 
a cosmic philosophy. See From Comte to Benjamin Kidd, p. 72. 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 173 

electricity is a mode of motion, the organ for direct 
perception of it is lacking in us. It is possible to make 
complaint of the fewness of our senses. The relativity- 
men have done this in every age, and Mr. Balfour 
now takes up the tale. What would satisfy such 
critics ? If they had fifty senses in lieu of five, they 
might complain that they had not five hundred; if 
they had five hundred, they might clamour for five 
thousand or for fifty thousand. Our senses can enable 
us to perceive the orderliness of nature and control its 
uses and thrill to its beauty ; they put us in touch 
with our fellow-men and suggest to us the great unseen 
Friend. And thus they do their work. Perhaps it is 
in the region of the Beautiful that the change is most 
noticeable which a wise acceptance of evolution in- 
volves. Nature is not objectively a quivering jelly, 
and only subjectively " for us " a thing of life and 
beauty. The lower view is put with great force by a 
mind who saw well past it, R. L. Stevenson in Pulvis 
et Umbra. 1 " Matter," he says, " when not purified by 
the lustration of fire, rots uncleanly into something we 
call life ; seized through all its atoms with a pediculous 
malady ; swelling in tumours that become independent, 
sometimes even (by an abominable prodigy) locomotory ; 
one splitting into millions, millions cohering into one, 
as the malady proceeds through varying stages. ... In 
two main shapes this eruption covers the face of the 
earth, the animal and the vegetable. . . . What a 
monstrous spectre is . . . man, the disease of the 
agglutinated dust." 

This we say is the lower view of nature. According to 
the higher view, life is not a strange something inserted 
1 In his volume, Across the Plains. 



174 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

into nature from without (and here is the advantage 
of belief in natural evolution). Life is only the ful- 
filment of matter's own " promise and potency." The 
undulations were incompletely real until they were seen 
and heard. If all nature is not demonstrably alive, at 
least all is framed for life and craves life. Not what 
is first but what is last in evolution is most characteristic 
and most important ; not the blind, deaf world of the 
primeval nebula, but that world of poised forces, that 
world of glory and beauty, in which man and humanity 
live; that world which has evolved into colour and 
music, into life and thought and love. 

The environment in man's case is a wide one. Across 
the almost measureless yet measured abyss of space, 
stars and nebulae send their beams to this earth; and 
some rays touch the optic nerves of men, giving a new 
vision of the "starry heavens above." The furthest 
" parcels of matter " as well as the nearest have signi- 
ficance for us. We find all nature correspondent in 
some sense to man's life and man's thought. 

And we trust — though we do not prove — that the 
life and thought, which have emerged here for a little 
season, do not pass away into the darkness again, but 
pass into the light. 1 

1 We must confess to having abandoned Hegel's guidance. The 
highest stage in Hegel's Philosophy of Nature is the healing art ; and its 
highest attainment is — death. This is neither a jest nor a Platonic 
parable, but a piece of sentimental unbelief. 

The contents of the Philosophy of Nature — in its advance from sjmce 
to man — may be given in the briefest outline : 
Mechanics. 
Physics. 

Organics. Mineral (fossil). 

Vegetable. 
Animal. 



CHAPTER X 

Transition to the Philosophy of Spirit 

Hitherto we have mainly considered Hegel's philo- 
sophy of the Absolute or his doctrine of reality; in 
other words — in Hegel's own words — we have dealt 
with his Logic. We have inclined to accept Hegel's 
idea of an absolute system as in some sense true, while 
we have seen reason to distrust that dialectic method 
upon which Hegel relies for the confirmation and the 
elaboration of his doctrine. Now we have to proceed 
to applications of the Logic. In the light of a triumph- 
antly established doctrine of reality as such, we are 
next invited to take account of various realities. One 
such has already been before us in the Philosophy of 
Nature ; but Hegel's ill success there is pretty widely 
admitted by his friends, and the realities with which 
the Philosophy of Spirit deals are of such importance 
as to give an entirely new interest to the development 
of Hegel's thought. Even the abstract doctrine of 
reality as Hegel teaches it has strange difficulties. 
What is the full account of the relation of reality to 
thought ? We have not yet ventured on an answer ; 
but in some sense Hegel holds that thought does not 
simply explain reality, but implies reality, is coextensive 
with reality, is reality. And henceforth, not in Nature 

175 



176 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

merely but in Spirit, Hegel undertakes to show by 
deduction from his Logic the necessity and the real but 
limited worth of every phase of existence. The potenti- 
alities of the Logic require or imply the highest experi- 
ences of the human soul. Of course the dialectic method 
of development goes with us still, and we have cause 
again to dread its limiting influences. Hegel will 
aspire to show us how within ethics, aesthetics, religion, 
the various phases of ethical, aesthetic, religious thought 
and life may be expected to emerge. Each mode of 
the spirit must come to light, and each must reveal its 
weaknesses. But nothing will be done to show us how 
the various elements of spirit supplement each other, 
either inside an area, or upon an encyclopaedic view of 
the complementary areas of the world of mind. Reality 
is still to be serial or successive. Nothing in any 
region of study is to be more than a phase. 

Has the conception of absolute system any real con- 
tribution to offer in the fields of study that now lie 
before us ? Can inquiry into the nature of the True 
shed light upon the nature of the Beautiful and the 
Good ? Surely it must do so. There are not two 
regions of reality, — one, where truth reigns; another, 
where distinct ideals that know nothing about truth set 
up their thrones. Beauty and goodness, we may trust, 
are part of the truth of things. One kind of know- 
ledge—if we are to carry analysis and distinction even 
as far as this — deals with beauty ; another kind — if we 
are to call it so — deals with goodness. But all are 
akin in this, that they give us knowledge. All deal 
with reality. There cannot be two realities — if there 
are, why do we call them by the same name ? From 
the Divine point of view, accessible to us or inaccessible, 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRIT 177 

the two will necessarily reveal themselves as phases of 
one reality. 

Perhaps a different question arises when we ask 
whether we learn anything further in the study of 
Beauty and Goodness. As usual, there are plausible 
grounds for reckoning Hegel a supporter of each alter- 
native. He adds to his Logic a Philosophy of 
Spirit — would he have done that if he had had 
no fresh material to submit ? He regards every- 
thing as settled in principle by the Logic; — does 
such a position do justice to the human heart and 
conscience ? 

The question is largely discussed upon psychological 
grounds, or at least in psychological language. The 
trichotomy of intellect, feeling, will, is in high favour at 
present. Even so strong an admirer of Hegel as Mr. 
M'Taggart makes use of it, telling us that "while 
Hegel was justified in identifying all Being with 
Spirit, 1 he was not justified in taking the further step 
of identifying the true nature of Spirit exclusively 
with pure thought," — exclusively, i.e. in contrast with 
Spirit's " two other aspects besides thought, namely, 
volition and feeling." 2 The Philosophy of Spirit, in 
Hegel's hands, undertakes to show how will — Objective 
Spirit in Hegel ; Practical Reason in Kant — neces- 
sarily emerges from a study of thought and its object. 
{Feeling is rapidly dismissed; Hegel despises it too 
much to do more than note it as a link with the brutes.) 
Ultimately, like all opposites, it coheres with its 
opposite (with thought) in the Absolute Mind. — Must 
we not say here what we have said before ? Is it not 

1 Compare closing chapter. 

2 Studies in Hegelian Dialectic, p. 119. 

12 



178 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

necessary to regard thought, feeling, and will as con- 
nected at the roots? Would it not be as fatal to 
suppose Reason to have strange bedfellows in the 
spiritual life as to make the same assertion in regard 
to the intellectual life ? One may value every protest 
against Hegel's cold intellectualism, and yet may 
wince under the tendency to regard the psychological 
trichotomy as an ultimate metaphysical truth. A 
brilliant but whimsical theological professor, now 
passed away, used to make great use of the hypothesis 
of a " fairy " — i.e. a possible intelligence without morals 
or responsibility. Are we to take for granted that 
intellect and will are really and objectively separable ? 
Is it a mere accident that our census enumerators do 
not need a column for the Good People ? Must we not 
rather aspire to show — in less airy fashion than Hegel 
— that all psychical phenomena are joint manifestations 
of one spiritual principle ? Even if we fail to prove 
this, must we not continue to believe it ? At any rate, 
it does not seem possible that moral or sesthetic or 
religious experience should occur except in a rational 
being. Whether or not Reason (demonstrably) implies 
the Good, the Beautiful, and the Holy, these great 
" values " obviously imply reason. Yet deduction may 
not be possible. It is questionable whether man's 
mind can deduce either space or sensation from the 
idea of knowledge; and it may be no less doubtful 
whether mind can deduce heart or conscience from the 
idea of Reason. 

Hegel's grouping is different from the division so 
generally accepted to-day. His trichotomy — for of 
course he divides as usual by three — is mind sub- 
jective, i.e., roughly, Psychology; mind objective — 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRIT 179 

Ethics ; moral institutions rather than the moral con- 
sciousness; and mind absolute or religion, with a 
threefold subdivision; ^Esthetics, Religion in the 
narrower or more proper sense, and, triumphant over 
all, Philosophy or Absolute Knowledge. 

The prominence given to psychology is unexpected. 
Its treatment is not the least characteristic part of the 
Philosophy of Spirit. We look in vain for what we 
ordinarily expect under the name of psychology. The 
self is absent. Knowledge is analysed once again ; 
knowledge, not the knower, is important to this type 
of idealist philosophy. We observe the tendency not 
only in Hegel, but to a large extent even in Green. 
Locke's "thinking thing" awakens the fullest scorn 
of Green's mind. Even to the saint of the British 
Hegelian movement the individual mind is a paltry 
affair. Kant and Hegel are held to have suppressed 
not simply the soul-thing of the old Rational Psy- 
chology, but almost the soul itself — thing or person, 
substance or (individual) subject. 

We venture to suggest that this strange colour- 
blindness can be accounted for. From an analysis 
of mere knowledge, it is impossible to infer the im- 
portance of personality. As long as men are studied 
merely as knowers, their " individuality " is as " casual " 
a thing as Hegel himself could wish to make it. As 
knowers, we differ from each other — if the expression 
may be allowed — quantitatively, and only so. Some 
know more truths than others do ; but whatever we 
truly know, so far as we truly know it, is identical — 
in you, in me, in every one who attains it. Once a 
truth, always true. Nor can there be a sillier develop- 
ment even of a Protectionist tariff than the attempt to 



1 8o HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

boycott foreign thoughts. Yet "made in Germany" 
passed for years in our country as a refutation of any 
unwelcome Biblical discovery ; and in Germany itself 
the whole orthodox development of the early Christian 
centuries is condemned off-hand bv a vigorous school 
of theologians as a working of the Greek mind. 
Such wholesale condemnation is at least overhasty. 
A syllogism is not the less cogent because a ponderous 
Teuton or because a hungry Greek was the first to put 
it in shape. From the point of view of mere know- 
ledge, indeed, our separate minds are no better than 
shifting heaps of percepts, principles, syllogisms, in 
rapid circulation from one to another. Mind is homo- 
ousios or even tawtoousios with mind, so far as mere 
knowledge goes. Differences " are null, are nought " ; 
individuals share the same knowledge, and not even 
the highest individual fully embodies — much less 
engrosses — the great stream of the knowledge of his 
time. But feeling is differently constituted. Pleasure 
is profoundly personal, and so is pain. "The heart 
knoweth his own bitterness, and a stranger inter- 
meddleth not with his joy." Modern wisdom reiterates 
the truth : " we myriad mortals live — alone." It may 
be that Lotze erred in making personality a thing of 
feeling in contrast with consciousness ; he is certainly 
right in urging that we shall never understand what 
personality means or where it ends by ignoring the 
feelings and studying the abstract intelligence. We 
carry this truth with us into the region of ethics. 
Hegel's doctrine of system is good for something, good 
for much, but emphatically not good for everything. 
The self which selfishness caters for is the self which 
feels pleasure and dreads pain ; the self which love 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPIRIT 181 

sacrifices is the same throbbing feeling atom — in no 
sense is it the Pantheistic logical self of A-dvaita or 
"Nondualism" which is identical in all conscious 
subjects. Finally, the self which love prizes is the 
self who is a particular embodiment of universal 
reason, not barely as intellect but as intellect, will, 
love. My friend is my alter ego; and that he is 
alter is quite as important as that he is ego. All love 
is a "synthetic" union of differences which persist 
through the union and enrich it. By an analysis 
merely of knowledge you cannot penetrate into the 
Holy Land of personality — God's or man's. The most 
striking feature in the philosophy we have still to 
study is Hegel's absolute confidence in the relevance 
and adequacy of intellectual clues. Such exaggeration 
turns truth into error. 

NOTE. 
Outline Contents op Philosophy of Mind. 

I. Mind Subjective. 

A. Anthropology ; the Soul. 

(a) The Physical Soul. 

(a) Physical qualities. 

(/3) Physical alterations. 

(y) Sensibility. 
(6) The Feeling Soul. 

(a) In its immediacy. 

(j8) Self-feeling. 

(y) Habit, 
(c) The Actual Soul. 

B. Phenomenology ; Consciousness. 

(a) Consciousness proper. 

(a) Sensuous consciousness. 
(i3) Sense-perception. 
(y) Intellect. 



1 82 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

(6) Self-consciousness. 

(a) Appetite. 

(/3) Self-consciousness recognitive. 

(y) Universal self-consciousness, 
(c) Reason. 
C. Psychology; Mind [Grist]. 

(a) Theoretical Mind. 

(a) Intuition. 

(/3) Representation. 

oa Recollection. 

j3/3 Imagination. 

yy Memory, 
(y) Thinking. 

(b) Mind Practical. 

(a) Practical sense. 

(/3) The impulses and choice. 

(y) Happiness. 

(c) Free Mind. 

II. Mind Objective. [See after Chap. XII.] 
III. Absolute Mind. 

A. Art. 

B. Revealed Religion. 

C. Philosophy. 



CHAPTER XI 

Hegelianism and Psychology 

Liteeature. — A. Hegel's Philosophy of Mind, translated with 
Prolegomena by William Wallace. 

B. The Phenomenology of Spirit. 

G. Green's papers, "Can there be a Natural Science of Man?" 
in Mind for 1880, are the most important "Hegelian" discussion 
of Psychology in our language. Professor Sorley on the Historical 
Method [Essays in Philosophical Criticism}, referred to below, may 
also be studied with advantage. 

The traditional English approach to philosophy, from 
Locke downwards, is by way of psychology and the 
method of introspection. Among the perplexities which 
beset the learner, who tries to grasp the thoughts of 
Hegel, are the absence of psychology as he knows it, 
and the contempt with which " empirical psychology " 
is sometimes spoken of. 

The expression " empirical psychology " was not 
invented to express contempt, any more than " higher 
criticism " was invented to enforce lofty assumptions. 
Both are or were technical scientific designations. 
Wolf contrasted " empirical " with " rational " psycho- 
logy. The latter was the science which claimed to 
demonstrate the unity, simplicity, and immortality 
of the substance composing the human soul. In con- 

183 



1 84 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

trast with that sublime body of truths, empirical psy- 
chology was but a poor thing in Wolf's own judgment. 
Still, it had its place among his sciences; and there 
are writers of Catholic Manuals of Philosophy — also 
I think some others — who even now practise the study 
under both names. Kant, however, in the Critique of 
Pure Reason pulverises the more pretentious science 
or pseudo-science, the Rational Psychology. Those 
who accept Kant's guidance or admit the force of his 
criticisms have no psychology left except the empirical, 
to which on occasion the great masters themselves, 
both Kant and Hegel, refer with a certain marked 
disparagement. In lieu of the old rational psychology, 
Kant created a new thing in his Critique of Pure 
Reason. Some may call the new thing an epistemo- 
logy, but Hegel transforms it into a Logic or into 
an entire philosophical encyclopedia — construing the 
nature of reality from a centre, and reading off its 
chief headings a priori. In the Hegelian Encyclo- 
paedia the name Psychology is assigned to one-third 
part — the highest third — of his treatment of Subjective 
[cognitive] Mind [literally, Spirit]. This is more or 
less a technical restriction; and we may say that all 
the pages in which Hegel discusses Subjective Mind 
deal with the topics of psychology — though not in the 
fashion of ordinary psychologists. 

What is the difference between this discussion and 
the handling of mind and mental topics which we have 
had from Hegel in the Logic ? So far as I understand, 
the Logic threads together categories, according to 
which the mind may classify or define reality, without 
inquiring whether mind anywhere exists. So far as 
we may tie down Hegel to a definite choice between 



HEGELIANISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 185 

alternatives — and so far as he believes in reality at all 
— he recognises no field of reality corresponding 
specially to the Logic. All realities are either natural 
or spiritual, while both classes alike embody the ground 
principles of the Logic, considered as an analysis not of 
this existence or of that, but of all possible existence. 
Or, as Hegel might prefer to say, reality being a unity 
is the unity of the natural and the spiritual. Now, 
however, we have reached a stage in philosophy at 
which it becomes expedient to observe — or, as Hegel 
might say, to demonstrate a priori — that mind 
exists. 

Empirical psychology is regarded by many idealists 
as not merely empty but harmful ; they distrust the 
metaphysical assumptions which are apt to be associated 
with it. It aims at showing the origin of mind. It 
can hardly do anything else ; it is a science ; and 
science studies the origins of things in order to account 
for them and to estimate their value. A generation 
ago, the chief reliance of empirical psychology was 
placed upon the laws of association. Mind was a 
number of sensations, shaken up together as if in a 
bag — though indeed there was no bag in the case — and 
somehow adhering to each other in vacancy by re- 
semblances and by contiguity. This older form of 
empirical or rather empiricist psychology — i.e. empirical 
psychology made thorough, or empirical psychology 
with empiricist metaphysics — has pretty well dis- 
appeared. The Intuitionalist or the Kantian refuta- 
tion was cogent. Without a principle of unity, the 
moments of time could never penetrate into conscious- 
ness ; they must be held together for that purpose ; or 



1 86 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

time must be an a priori consciousness. Still plainer 
is the futility of every effort to account for the 
origin of a consciousness of space in a mind as yet 
destitute of it, even if such a mind had somehow 
learned to arrange its sensations in time. Thus space 
also must be an a priori consciousness ; while Kant of 
course proceeds to add to the a priori stock all that 
makes knowledge rational and orderly. 

Conclusions regarding the consciousness of time and 
of space are met by theories of heredity. Whether 
legitimate or not on biological grounds — there the 
matter is doubtful — such theories cannot possibly score 
a psychological success. What is psychologically and 
consciously unthinkable yesterday — the origination of 
a consciousness of time out of loose sensations, or of a 
consciousness of space out of something so heterogeneous 
to it as time — is no less unthinkable any number of 
thousands of years B.C., when the "probably arboreal" 
ancestor of mankind began to take stock of his mental 
furniture. We must not, as Martineau has said, allow 
the materialists to suppose that they can " crib causa- 
tion by inches." And, as Hegel would warn us, we 
must not accept an impossible evolution simply because 
it has been " pushed, for the sake of clearness, well into 
the darkness of the past." 1 If space became a con- 
sciousness in primitive psychology, it cannot have been 
by origination out of any previously existing conscious- 
ness ; it must have been by some subconscious process. 
But if we are to resort to the subconscious self for 
explanations, there is no reason why we should go 
thousands of years back for them. We gain nothing 
by doing so. The appeal to heredity is therefore 
1 Compare p. 170. 



HEGELIANISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 187 

irrelevant. What the theory really amounts to is an 
affirmation that consciousnesses of Time and Space are 
reactions of mind upon the data of sense. 

This conclusion suggests an interesting remark by 
Professor Ritchie, that " chemical analogies lie at the 
base of many current psychological theories," but that 
a " higher stage " in consciousness is not " a mere 
chemical product of elements different from it." 1 
Empiricists may retort by asking how Professor 
Ritchie can veto chemical theories if the facts are 
found to support them. If, as a matter of experience, 
we find that the union of two or three facts in the 
mental area results in another and heterogeneous fact — 
" not a fourth sound but a star " — may we not say so ? 
Professor Ritchie's reply, one fancies, would be that we 
cannot regard as ultimate [in any region ?] the analysis 
established by the categories of " chemism," and that, if 
two things by coming together result in a third, they 
must have had from the beginning a relation uniting 
them — they were never merely two distinct and 
separate things. Further, an idealist would in all 
probability demand that a higher value should be 
attached to the mental area. In the case before us, 
the idealist might plead that the mind which reacts 
is the cause of the new idea — and probably, further, 
that the idea ought to be accepted simply as true. In 
view of the difficulties raised by another consideration, 
— the Kantian antinomies, — it may be better to regard 
the consciousnesses of Time and Space as relatively, not 
absolutely, true. We may accept them as the fitting 

1 Darwin and Eegel, p. 12. I am not certain, however, whether 
the theory spoken of is one of the class which Professor Ritchie has in 
view. 



1 88 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

way of conceiving natural realities from the point of 
view of limited human thought. If that be correct, 
we should not get nearer the real nature of things by 
endeavouring to strip our mental picture of the colours 
of Time and Space. On the contrary, Time and Space 
are the very means by which we approach as near as 
is possible for us to a true construing of natural 
realities. But the fringe of the false Infinite round 
their margin shows that they cannot be absolutely 
true — or, true for the Absolute — or, true for God (God 
is not in Time and Space. Nor are we ; but our 
experience is). Hegel, on the other hand, thinks none 
the worse of Time and Space because of the taint of 
antinomy in them. He finds paradox and antinomy in 
all realities, or at least in all finite realities ; and he 
recognises no absolute reality beyond its embodiment 
in the finite. The Absolute escapes from contradiction 
by its unending process ; in which surely all reality 
threatens to disappear. 

It follows that Hegel will criticise the intuitionalist 
psychology, which we have been championing, quite as 
strongly as the empiricist psychology opposed to it. 
He declines to study an empty mind, assumed to be 
equipped with a set of empty faculties lying alongside 
one another. He will not separate mind from its con- 
tents. The subject of his study is thought. He will 
not accept what he regards as the " Vorstellung " of a 
mind originally opposed to a world, of which it is 
somehow to obtain knowledge. (The opposition arises, 
he grants, in the development of thought; it marks 
the stage of Phenomenology ; but it is transcended 
again.) Such a representation he regards as making 
knowledge impossible. No manipulation of ideas will 



HEGELIANISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 189 

enable us to reach across into real knowledge, if, in the 
determining data from which we start, this gulf is 
found. If we begin with mere ideas of our own, we 
must end with such mere ideas. The doom of " cosmo- 
thetic idealism" is as plainly decreed in Hegel's judg- 
ment as in Hamilton's. But he finds no remedy in a 
"natural dualism," plus the assertion of an "immediate" 
knowledge of a foreign reality. To Hegel such know- 
ledge — stated as the knowledge of a particular finite 
mind — is a sophistication and an absurdity. The 
Natural Realist defines the situation in a way which 
opens up a prospect of cosmothetic idealism or of 
scepticism ; then, in defiance of himself, he affirms that 
the mind knows reality. Hegel wishes to prove this, 
or, in his own language, to " think " it, and not merely 
to affirm it in defiance of one's own metaphysical 
assumptions. He believes that he is able to " think " 
or justify it by his peculiar method of treatment. 
Mind or thought or knowledge is itself the infinite 
totality. That haunting presence and potency which 
everywhere pervades Hegelianism, is here conceived as 
realised in knowledge as such. Knowledge is made up 
of knowledges of every possible (significant) kind ; and 
knowledge treated qua knowledge — not as this being's or 
that being's, but simply as knowledge on the part of mind 
— shows us that it cannot be conceived as separated 
from its object. Or rather it is so conceived only at an 
inferior and inadequate stage in the evolution of thought. 
There are three stages — First, that of the animal mind, 
or subconscious self, to the study of which Hegel 
appropriates the name Anthropology. This is in paral- 
lelism to the logical categories of Being. Secondly, we 
have the stage lately spoken of — the stage of distinc- 



190 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

tions and oppositions — of consciousness as Hegel calls 
it, to whose study he appropriates the name Pheno- 
menology. This is regarded as corresponding to the 
reflective categories of Essence in the Logic. At this 
stage we study the mind and its phenomena ; or we 
study mind in relation to things and to itself; or 
phenomena are referred (at this stage) to a reality 
beyond, alike in the subject and in the object. The 
early Phenomenology of Spirit includes a review of 
the whole contents of philosophy as conceived by 
Hegel, and includes, as we have observed, 1 a large 
number of the arguments and even bon-mots which 
are repeated in his later treatises. In the briefer 
statement, included in his Encyclopaedia, Hegel tries to 
make Phenomenology a part of philosophy, rather than 
a microcosm or encyclopaedic outpouring. According to 
the usual Hegelian argument, the study of mind as 
cognitive, with which we have been occupied, requires 
or suggests a third view of mind — Geist in the proper 
sense — to whose explicit study Hegel appropriates the 
name Psychology. This branch of study corresponds 
with the logical Notion. One is tempted to say that 
the department named Phenomenology corresponds 
better to what is ordinarily known as Psychology, since 
in Phenomenology the mind is (temporarily) indi- 
vidualised by contrast with its objects. Still, in 
Hegel's Psychology, we have a discussion of the 
functions or faculties of mind ; and thus far his 
nomenclature is intelligible. The whole method is 
characteristically Hegelian. He is discussing the 
manifestation of mind in a series framed by himself 
and justified by its significance ; ruled of course by 

1 See note on p. 71. 



HEGELIANISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 191 

his dialectic formula. He believes that the result is to 
urge us forward into the position of Free Mind or Ob- 
jective Mind (or Morality), and ultimately of Absolute 
Mind (religion, etc.), in which subject and object are 
identical (whatever that means; whether it means, 
All is rational, or All is thought, or All reality is com- 
posed of thinkers). The only refuge which Hegel will 
admit from the ordinary psychological dualism of mind 
and things, with the scepticism which he believes to 
follow close upon it, is this strange pantheistical study 
of mind as mind. When treating of the " soul " in 
" Anthropology," Hegel warns us against separating 
the individual soul from the general life of nature to 
which it belongs. When he speaks of finite mind, we 
must beware of supposing him to speak of finite minds. 
To him, finite mind is not a mind of an imperfect type, 
but an imperfect stage in the evolution of mind as 
mind — which, while imperfect, is nevertheless in its own 
place a necessary stage. Such is Hegel's attitude to- 
wards the problems of psychology ; and this unwonted 
attitude is represented by him as the only alternative 
to a pseudo-scientific treatment of the subject, involv- 
ing the abrogation and abandonment of knowledge. 
As usual, during the development of his theme he 
contrives to say a number of fine things in essayist 
fashion. As usual, also, his method is attended with 
such ambiguity that very different views may be taken 
of the question, what he is talking about ; and to the 
end the answer remains doubtful. When a writer 
repudiates the proposition as a mode of statement in- 
adequate to truth, and when he considers such forms of 
thought as identity and difference no better than empty 
abstractions, — why, then, it is only natural that he him- 



192 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

self should not know what he is talking about, nor yet 
what he says about it. Unfortunately, so long as he 
uses human speech, he can only write down proposi- 
tions. What then is the subject in his propositions? 
What is mind as mind ? We can only repeat a sugges- 
tion made in last chapter: it is mind conceived as 
barely cognitive. So conceived, mind possesses no real 
individuality. As far as knowledge goes, no definite 
line separates one mind from another. If, holding a 
Theistic creed, we take a Theistic view of Idealism, 
then Hegel teaches us to regard God as the Great 
Supreme mind. If we are Pantheists, or if we interpret 
idealism pantheistically, then Hegel must be held to 
trace the evolution of the average normal (human) 
mind, though perhaps one so ideally normal as never 
to have existed. 

One result of Hegel's position as understood by 
many of his followers, was a rejection of empirical 
psychology as pronounced as Comte's. Both Idealists 
and Positivists have treated psychology as a sham 
science. Comte wished to replace it by sociology or by 
phrenology ; Hegel offered in its place his Logic or his 
own Psychology, which, like his Logic, treats all parts 
and subdivisions as successive stages in the evolution 
of a whole. In the early Phenomenology Hegel pur- 
sues the sham science of phrenology through many 
pages of angry banter ; x but at the end he lets us see 
that he is aiming past phrenology at empirical psycho- 
logy. Any doctrine of a mind [Locke's "thinking 
thing "] means to Hegel that the mind is being treated 
as a non-fluid sensuous material existence. As well 
say " skull " and " bumps " as " mind " and " faculties " 

1 Pp. 235-254. 



HEGELIANISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 193 

— one is as near the truth as the other. And in the 
same passage he declares that, when psychology affirms 
the mind to be a thing, what it is really trying to 
affirm is that all things are of the nature of mind! 
If such an ingenious tour de force is to pass muster as 
an argument, who need despair of demonstrating a 
priori any position which has hit his fancy ? 

The science — if we are to call it so — of empirical 
psychology has, however, held its ground and fought 
its way back to recognition by sheer weight of metal 
as a useful body of observed facts. What we have 
cause to fear is lest it should come back like other 
emigres, " having learned nothing and having forgotten 
nothing." In a word, we fear the revival of dangerous 
metaphysical assumptions. It is true that modern 
naturalistic psychology is more respectful than the 
older naturalism to ideals — e.g. the ideals of morality. 
It accepts them as facts of the human mind ; but one 
fears that the justification is inadequate and the 
acceptance half-hearted. It is true, again, that there 
is a form of psychology which proposes to suspend 
all metaphysical issues and merely describe phenomena. 
As science grows older and more blase or perhaps 
more ruse, we may expect similar proposals in many 
different regions. Will the programme ever be acted 
on ? And if you do describe psychical phenomena 
so as to admit all reference to a Self, have you really 
observed scientific neutrahty? Or have you drawn 
the disputed line altogether in favour of the wrong 
claimant ? Psychical phenomena which have no refer- 
ence to a Self are surely fanciful monsters; unless 
they are the conventional materials of an admittedly 
technical and provisional statement of facts. The 
T 3 



194 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

restriction, however, is rarely kept in mind. Even the 
doctrine of a presentation continuum seems to say too 
little. Just as a conscious series must be more than a 
series, so a conscious continuum must be more than 
a continuum. Consciousness is a unity, not a con- 
tinuity. Though our experience is in time, we are not 
in time. Just because we are the conscious subjects 
of experience, and are conscious of phenomena in time, 
we must stand above the stream. 

Hegel knew nothing of these later refinements or 
sophistications. In the British school, where his in- 
fluence has been so strongly felt, differences of opinion 
have appeared, mainly perhaps since the general 
adoption of belief in evolution as a process in time. 
If not logically necessary, it was humanly natural that 
the new position should suggest a friendlier attitude 
toward empiricism; and to empiricism time-evolution 
is everything, while mind is one of many phenomenal 
products. Professor Andrew Seth, in his early Develop- 
ment from Kant to Hegel, suggested that Idealism was 
strong enough to accept "the whole associationist 
psychology " ; and Professor Ritchie, who puts so high 
a value on Darwinism, seems equally favourable in his 
attitude towards the modern psychology of evolution- 
ism. T. H. Green, on the other hand, felt that in 
fighting naturalism he was defending the most sacred 
interests of the moral consciousness; and Professor 
Sorley's contribution to Essays in Philosophical Criti- 
cism vindicates some of the findings of a non-empiricist 
or intuition alist psychology. This latter position we 
believe to be wise. Psychology is not Alpha and 
Omega, as the Scottish philosophy supposed. We 
need a deeper and more thorough metaphysic. But 



HEGELIANISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 195 

assuredly we also need to affirm certain views in 
psychology and to exclude others. Both knowledge and 
morals are at stake. If mind can be accounted for and 
explained as a phenomenon, we shall vainly try to gain 
acceptance for a complementary or supplementary 
doctrine of a deeper cast. If " psychogeny " is feasible, 
idealism in every form will soon be stone dead, and it 
will go badly with those interests or " values " which 
connote the truth of some form of idealism. We 
must fight the problem of psychology, or we must 
lay down our arms. But to fight naturalism only in 
order that we may substitute for it the misty ambi- 
guities of Hegel's teaching would seem to be scarcely 
worth our while. Valuable as an instalment of truth, 
Hegel's doctrine of the Absolute is a dreary failure 
when presented, by himself or by his admirers, as the 
whole of truth. 

NOTE A. 

On the Phenomenology of Spirit. 

Valuable help to an understanding of the Phenomenology 
is furnished by Chapters V. to VII. of Dr. Baillie's Origin and 
Significance of Hegel's Logic; and by the tolerably full sum- 
mary in Dr. Harris's Hegel 's Logic, Chapters IV. to VIII. Pro- 
fessor Baillie calls attention to the assumed peculiarity of the 
Phenomenology as contrasted with the Logic. The spring of 
advance in the former is the " difference between knowledge 
and truth" — in other words, between knowledge and our 
conscious ideal of what our knowledge ought to be ( — ought 
to be in order that it may correspond to the object ; Hegel, 
however, insists that we should be equally warranted in 
inverting the formula, and in saying that we perceive a 
gap which must be filled if the object of knowledge is to be 



196 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

adequate to thought). This may be regarded as a reply to 
agnosticism. That fashionable form of opinion tells us that 
we are (consciously) unable to know things in their truth. 
Hegel retorts that, before we could make such a statement, 
we must already possess a consciousness of what the truth or 
reality of things is; and he adds that such a consciousness 
will operate on our knowledge so as to ripen it. He further 
adds that, when we know things more truly, we get as it were 
a new object ; 1 and as to it, we make again the distinction 
between our knowledge and the reality [or the "truth"] — 
then correct our knowledge — then find that we have a new 
object on our hands — and so on. Hegel thus teaches, here as 
everywhere, that the various possible types of consciousness 
will emerge in a single linear series — complete in every part, 
and nowhere redundant or repeating itself. We may begin 
with the lowest sensuous knowledge; we end with the 
fulness of Eeason, with a knowledge become absolute. From 
consciousness [of things] through £eZ/-consciousness [which 
knows the Self] we proceed to ["Eeason"] an idealism which 
is aware that things are of the very nature of Thought or Self. 
In contrast, however, with his immediate idealist predecessors, 
Hegel requires that this should not be merely asserted, but 
exhibited in detail. Accordingly, the whole of what he 
subsequently names " Philosophy of Spirit " — all the content of 
Psychology, Ethics, ^Esthetics, Eeligion — with Metaphysics — 
is alleged to be generated in this singular serial fashion. Thus 
is constituted the later and larger part of the book. And all 
types of experience are assumed to have their significance as 
Knowledge types, — their defect, as falling short of absolute 
knowledge — their value, as (each in its turn) pushing us 
forward towards that goal. 



1 So far as Hegel's idealism involves anything of the nature of a trick, 
this is one of the points where that shows itself. Psychologically, the 
object may be new ; ontologically, how can it be ? 



HEGELIANISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 197 

We are not said to measure (in the Phenomenology) each 
consciousness against absolute knowledge, but against its own 
truth. It is supposed to be characteristic (of the twofoldness 
of the attitude of mind at the stage when it contrasts mind 
and its object ?) that consciousness in this region sees double, 
and stands face to face with two magnitudes — our actual 
knowledge of the object, and our half-conscious perception of 
the object-in-itself. The contrast presented by the Logic does 
not consist in the mind's making play with the highest 
category — at least not directly or consciously. In "pure 
thought " we have but one object before us at a time. Cate- 
gory succeeds to category. We do not condemn them by any 
process of reflection or comparison; they tumble forward 
by their own instability. So far it may be true that the 
Phenomenology stands nearer to the ordinary consciousness 
than the Logic does, and offers an imaginable " ladder " for 
scrambling up to Hegel's heaven of absolute knowledge. Yet 
the whole purpose of the Phenomenology is to abolish the 
contrast with which it starts — between things and thought — 
between the thing-in-itself and the thing as we (in the first 
instance) imperfectly know it. 

If we suspect a trick when we are told that a different view 
of the object "of course" means a different object — our sus- 
picion is again aroused by the transition from law [or system] 
of forces to thought. 1 Up to that point, with the exception 
noted, there is a great deal of brilliant argumentative power 
in Hegel's discussion. Human thought begins by attributing 
reality to the mere sensuous particular; but that changes 
while we speak. So, too, the self is not unchanging but 
constantly changed. The reality, we then perceive, must be a 
universal and not a particular ( — must be a permanent self 
and a permanent object, constant through change ?). But it is 



1 This is very similar to the sudden appearance of "Notion " in the 
Logic ; see p. 146. 



198 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

hard to see how the permanent object with its manifold 
qualities can be one or can be real. It is surely self- 
contradictory — its qualities you say are many, and yet you 
persist in calling it one. Is the quality alone real — the 
sensuous universal ? Do we develop qualities in the innocent 
and simple object by the multiplicity of our sophistical 
senses? Or do we impart a spurious unity to the endless 
miscellaneousness of the object by the intrusion of our 
thought 1 Or do things evoke qualities in each other by mutual 
interference? [Every "quality" implies a relation to the 
Self, or — at least, and so far as clear consciousness goes — to 
another object.] We are thus pointed from things to a con- 
ception like " force," which implies action between different 
" things " ( — which implies processes of a range and complexity 
that reduce the assumed hard and impenetrable " thing " to 
a mere playground of forces). Next we are pointed on from 
force to "law" [or system of forces ; is this indentification 
legitimate? Dr. Harris thinks that more modern views on 
the correlation of the physical forces and the conservation of 
energy form an excellent illustration of Hegel's point]. And 
here the unity or system (or unity in differences) is so com- 
plex, that we have before us in nature visibly the image and 
likeness of mind or thought or notion. 1 Matter itself is re- 
vealed as having an " inner nature." Hegel makes his insight 
into the rationality [complexity ?] of physical nature serve as 
a justification of Fichtean language ; the development of his 
thought seems to be something different. 



1 For Begriff Dr. Harris renders or substitutes "self-activity." We 
cannot think that he fairly represents Hegel. He holds that we find 
recognised in Hegel necessary dependence of matter on thought, of the 
world on God, but not equally necessary relation of thought to matter 
(as its implied opposite), of God to the world (as the sphere of His self- 
fulfilment). God is " an immaterial Spirit" or "first cause," determin- 
ing Himself, and free to determine " created" things, if He likes. For 
good or for evil, Hegel's view is different. 



HEGELIANISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 199 

One is again perplexed at the continued use of the method 
of the Phenomenology after this rational insight (granting it 
to be legitimate) has been reached. Still, Hegel's method — 
the " Dialectic " method, employed first in the Phenomenology, 1 
then in the later system — requires this procedure, and (if the 
method be regarded as valid) warrants it. So far as the 
Idealist thesis is affirmed " immediately," or is an " assertion," 
Hegel will have it verify itself by developing dialectically 
into all the contents of Spirit — all ethics, aesthetics, etc. etc. 
Necessary connexion or necessary contrast is to be traced 
everywhere ; the clue (it is alleged) will not fail us. Hence, 
if we are to criticise the Phenomenology as false to Hegel's 
presuppositions, we must make our appeal to its peculiarities of 
order and arrangement. In " Observing Reason " it looks as 
if Hegel arbitrarily introduced us to another inferior stage — 
a Reason which seems more akin to " abstract understand- 
ing," — one which only observes from outside, though it is 
conscious that these outside things have a certain kinship 
with itself. 2 According to Dr. Baillie, the stage of Eeason is 
subdivided — (1) Reason dealing with the material, (2) with 
itself, (3) with what is both self and non-self, subjective 
and objective — Spirit. Here, then, the earlier ground is 
simply recapitulated ; but of course Hegel is fully warranted 
in telling us that that must be the case where the higher 
"rational" point of view has been reached. In this way 
Hegel reaches another new [consciousness or] "object" — 
Spirit; and [in this book, but not in the later system] 
" Spirit " is contrasted with other objects still — " Religion " 
and "Absolute Knowledge." Again, when we compare with 
the later system, it seems anomalous to meet with subjective 
morality at a position later — and higher — than that of the 

1 Dr. Baillie's Hegelian Logic. 

2 It will be competent for the Hegelian to retort that that position 
is too painfully characteristic of the present writer and of his 
limitations. 



200 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

moral institution, 1 and close upon religion. Yet again, Art is 
here a department under Eeligion. 

From this point of view we must answer Dr. Baillie's 
contention, that the Phenomenology is an abiding and integral 
part of Hegel's system. We must hold — and apparently 
Professor Baillie might admit this — that "Phenomenology" 
means the same thing in the earlier and later writings of 
Hegel. That is to say, Phenomenoloyy for Hegel denotes a 
form of mind in which thought and things are contrasted with 
each other, though it is certain — and he will show it — that 
this attitude of mind contains in nuce a higher synthesis. 
Granting the legitimacy of the Hegelian system, we must 
grant that any fragment of such an organism of truth, put 
under the microscope, will reveal the characteristic structure 
of the whole. In the Philosophy of Spirit, " Phenomenology " 
is only one small part, occupying its limited place. In the 
early treatise, the evolving individual mind, or mind vis-a-vis 
with things, is put under a very powerful microscope ; and we 
see "what God and what man is." Still there seems no 
reason to deny what our own study asserts and the best 
Hegelian authorities confirm, that the early Phenomenology 
shows a good deal of arbitrariness, subjectivity, mal-arrange- 
ment. In that sense we must hold that the book is not part 
of Hegel's final system. 

Finally, as to the contrast in procedure between Pheno- 
menology and Logic ; believers will be impressed by it ; those 
who believe less fully will think it of little consequence. 
Hegel may tell us that the mind sees double in one region 
and single in a higher [?] region. But if it be true, as his 
recent followers tell us, that in both alike the mind has the 

1 "Morality" is not treated with any more respect than elsewhere 
in Hegel's writings. If possible, it is even more contemptuously 
handled. It is impossible not to feel that the twofold discussion of 
morality under "Observing Reason" and "Spirit" is redundant. 



HEGELIANISM AND PSYCHOLOGY 201 

whole of experience, and the highest results attained, some- 
how operating as its guide, the contrast alleged between the 
two books (and regions of study) seems technical, if not 
arbitrary. 1 

1 The table of contents of the Phenomenology is curiously intricate 
in contrast with the more systematic triplicities of the later system. 
Of course there is triplicity : — A. Consciousness, B. Self-consciousness, 
C. Reason [strictly, the third grand heading is anonymous] ; and again 
"Consciousness" is divided — I. Sensuous Consciousness, II. Perception 
of "things," III. The world of [imperceptible] "forces." Again, 
"Reason" in its peculiar and technical sense is subdivided — A. 
Observing Reason, B. Self-developing Reason, C. Abstract Indi- 
vidualism [both B. and C. are part of a continuous ethical discussion, 
with a great deal of historical illustration or a priori construction of 
history ; the same discussion, with the same features, continues through 
the section of Spirit]. This part of the treatise is subdivided— a. b. c, 
a, /3, y, <xa, /3/3, 77, with the most perfect trichotomist orthodoxy. 
On the other hand, C. has four main divisions — (AA) Reason, (BB) 
Spirit, (CC) Religion, (DD) Absolute Knowledge (Philosophy?). We 
have therefore a threefold, a sixfold, and an eightfold division — A. 
(including I., II., III.), B. ( = IV.), C. [including (AA)=V., (BB) = VI., 
(CC) = VII., and (DD) = VIII.] ; or A., B., G. ; A. B, (AA), (BB), (CC), 
(DD) ; and I. -VIII. 

A. Consciousness. 

I. Sensuous Certainty. 
II. Perception [ Wdhmehmung], 

III. Force and [its discoverer] the Understanding, etc. 

B. Self-consciousness. 

IV. In its Truth. 

A. Dependence and Independence ; Master and Slave. 

B. Free Self - consciousness — Stoicism, Scepticism, 

Pessimism. 

C. (AA) Reason. 

V. Certainty and Truth of Reason. 

A. Observing Reason. 

B. The Self-realisation of Reason. 

C. Abstract Individualism. 
(BB) Spirit [Mind], 

VI. Mind. 

A. True Mind ; Morality [Sittlichkeit]. 



202 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

B. Self-estranged Mind ; Culture. 

I. 
II. The Aufklarung. 
III. Reign of Terror. 

C. Mind certain of itself, Conscience. 
(CC) Religion. 

VII. Religion. 

A. Natural. 

(a) Light. 

(5) Plant and Animal, 
(c) Artizan. 

B. Art Religion. 

(a) The Abstract Work of Art. 

(6) The Living Work of Art. 
(c) The Spiritual Work of Art. 

C. Revealed Religion. 
(DD) Absolute Knowledge. 

VIII. Absolute Knowledge. 



CHAPTER XII 

Hegelianism and Ethics 

Literature. — A. The ethical sections (Objective Mind) of the 
Philosophy of Mind, translated by Professor Wallace. More fully 
in the Philosophy of Right, translated by Dr. Dyde. 

B. Many sections of the Phenomenology. 

G. Mr. F. H. Bradley's Ethical Studies and Green's Prolegomena 
to Ethics "are the most important works in this department pro- 
duced in the course of the British Hegelian movement. A Manual 
by Professor Mackenzie, and a briefer one by Professor J. H. 
Muirheacl, contain more recent statements of ethics from the same 
general point of view. 

The ordinary British reader is accustomed to do his 
ethical thinking under the guidance of an intuitionalist 
theory. He believes that the final court of appeal is the 
voice of conscience in the human breast. He further 
believes — though perhaps he is increasingly conscious 
of the difficulties which such a position involves — that 
the oracle within, when you can reach it, supplies the 
same answers to the same questions in every human 
heart. He may follow one of two opinions as to 
particular intuitions. He may think of them as practic- 
ally numberless ; or he may conceive that there are a 
few grand ultimate moral intuitions, which for the 
most part are deductively and derivatively applied by 
the understanding, lawyer fashion, to particular cases. 



204 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

Either way, soon or late, intuitionalism leaves us face 
to face with an atomic plurality of distinct and separate 
moral axioms. These are regarded as self-evidently 
true, and as called in question only by a dishonest 
heart. Accordingly, the effort to find an explanation 
of their authority, or the effort to unify them, is thought 
to be already tinged with immoral casuistry. 

So closely does English popular opinion identify an 
earnest ethical philosophy with intuitionalism, that 
Kant has generally been catalogued in our country as 
an intuitionalist. The truth is very different. Kant 
has really gone far towards making intuitionalism 
impossible. On the side of knowledge he has shown 
that the supposed given elements of perception are all 
shot through with the work of thought, and that the 
supposed distinct first principles of a priori connexion 
between things are the manifold utterances or applica- 
tions of the idea of an orderly and knowable universe 
in Space and Time — with the vague presentiment 
lurking behind of a more absolute and systematic 
unity, such as corresponds more fully to the nature of 
thought. Similarly, on the side of conduct, Kant has 
urged that there must be one ideal operative in all the 
dicta of conscience. He finds, in fact, that conscience 
is reason working practically ; and, since he accepts the 
theory that self -consistency is the nature of reason, he 
defines morality as absolutely self-consistent behaviour. 
("Act so that thou canst will the maxim of thine 
action to be law universal.") 

Hegel and other critics have had no difficulty in 
showing that Kant's theory breaks down at this point. 
If reason is purely abstract, it can yield no concrete 
law of duty, and formal self -consistency cannot result 



HEGELIANISM AND ETHICS 205 

in material precepts or prohibitions. On watching at 
all closely, we see Kant reading into the idea of 
abstract self-consistent law those detailed differences 
which constitute a significant list of duties. Hegel, 
however, somewhat strangely and very characteristic- 
ally, seems to hold, not that Kant is wrong, but rather 
that Kant has brought to light the weaknesses of the 
merely moral consciousness. The contradictions of 
merely or subjectively moral thinking are supposed to 
play the part which is everywhere assigned in the 
Hegelian system to contradictions. They drive us on- 
wards, and thus there results a more healthy and more 
concrete form of morality. Then later contradictions 
spring up which drive us entirely out of morality and 
the objective mind into the Absolute Mind as Art 
(Hegel puts this first), or as Religion (Hegel puts this 
second, but the English Hegelians generally incline to 
draw a straight line from morals to religion), or last 
of all as Philosophy. Yet we must not suppose that 
Hegel rejects morality because of its contradictions. He 
acts as usual : he condemns it and he spares it. 

Alternatively, English and Scottish ethical thought 
has taken the direction of hedonism and empiricism. 
Dismissing intuitionalism as a lurking-place of fallacies 
and a bulwark of indefensible and irrational abuses, 
eager political reformers like Bentham and the Mills 
have sought to make all things crystal-clear by the 
application of the pleasure-test. Virtue is the purchase 
of a deferred annuity of future pleasures at the cost of 
present pain. Or virtue is the law of society imposed 
upon the restless and possibly selfish individual, restrain- 
ing him in the interests of maximum average happiness. 
Not to dwell upon other difficulties — the position is by 



206 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

no means so crystal-clear as its votaries hoped — this 
evidently is a fashion not of explaining but rather of 
explaining away the moral consciousness. Recent 
empiricist work has not the frankness of Jeremy Ben- 
tham's. It inclines rather to assume morality as given, 
and to study the phenomena of its development. It 
would be ungracious to quarrel with this new procedure. 
Certainly empiricism is nearer the ways of truth when 
it assumes than when it denies the validity of the moral 
ideal. Still, it was a healthy demand on the part of 
the older empiricists that a reckoning should be taken, 
sooner or later, for all assumptions employed. How 
will that reckoning be faced ? If empiricists are right — 
if we live in a world of mere phenomenal sequences — ■ 
have ideals any standing ground ? Evolution can do a 
good deal, but, if it works merely on phenomenal lines, 
can it ever justify conscience ? Error has its evolution 
as well as truth. By asking what has evolved ? we do 
not discriminate. If logic is given effect to, consistent 
empiricism must brand conscience as a morbid growth. 
Such thoroughness has already been shown by some. 

Over-against Intuitionalism and Empiricism, Idealism 
takes its stand, offering something new. It proposes to 
scrutinise the assumptions which Intuitionalism merely 
reiterates; and it hopes to explain or sanction ethics 
without explaining it away. The general theory offered 
us is in essence Kant's, with a correction. Conscience 
is again defined as Practical Reason — or, in Hegel's own 
terms, Mind [Geist] when Theoretical is Mind Subjective 
and Practical Mind is Mind Objective. Its aim or ideal 
is self-realisation. The self to be realised is not the 
natural individuality or natural temperament, but rather 
the self as rational or social — the self which finds its 



HEGELIANISM AND ETHICS 207 

interest and its satisfaction in the claims made upon 
it by a seemingly alien society. 

Hegel himself is evidently less interested in the 
moral consciousness than in the moral institution. He 
finds deliverance in the latter from the defects and 
from the sharp antitheses of the former. Sociology, 
Politics, Economics, Ethics, all enter into his " Philo- 
sophy of Right " — the very name is significant. If 
there is a stepchild in the family, it is ethics. Hegel's 
contempt for the subjective foams constantly into 
ebullition. Thus, while he admits that marriage may 
be entered upon either from inclination or at the 
paternal command, he finds that only the latter system 
is just to the moral interests and moral significance of 
the marriage union. Again, to make education pleasant 
to children is dangerous ; we ought to break them in. 
Again, to claim as a right liberty for the press — to " say 
what it pleases " — is " undeveloped crudity and super- 
ficiality of fanciful theorising." Indeed, Hegel treats 
the moral consciousness almost with the impatient 
contempt with which his interpreter Dr. Hutchison 
Stirling treats the Aufkldrung. It had to come in — 
of course ! It has its place — no doubt ! Still, it is 
pitifully weak and subjective; it is riddled through 
and through with contradictions ; x let us hasten onwards 
to pleasanter and worthier themes ! 

Hegel's triplicity here may be taken as follows: 
Morality first begins to arise in the consciousness of 
abstract or individual rights over-against other indi- 
viduals. Then Right gives place to Duty, and men 
say, with Carlyle or with Comte, " Thou hast one right 
— to do thy duty." But the higher truth is found in 
1 The criticism in the Phenomenology is particularly merciless. 



208 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

the conception of concrete or social right. Neither 
[personal] " right for right's sake/' nor [abstract] " duty 
for duty's sake," 1 but rather " my station and its 
duties." 1 Or — with Hegel this is treated as an equi- 
valent formula — Both "right for right's sake" and 
" duty for duty's sake," and, more emphatically, the 
relatively perfect stage of Social Institutions — Family, 
Civil Society, State. In other language — not perfectly 
accurate, but serviceably clear — Hegel may be said to 
begin with the right of the individual against society, 2 
to proceed to the abrogation of individual right in the 
consciousness of the claim of [society or rather of] 
duty, and finally to emerge into that region of realised 
institutional morality where the individual is not 
sacrificed, but merely subordinated, and so finds his 
own satisfaction in serving the interests of the 
whole. 

The first great institution is the family. Man finds 
his complement outside himself ; individualism is pro- 
claimed a falsehood by every happy home. Still the 
unity here reached exists only in the region of feeling ; 
or, if it reappears in bodily form in the child, the child 
grows up to be a third individuality alongside of the 
parents, and on his reaching maturity the natural 
unity of the home undergoes its natural dissolution, 
and fresh homes are formed. The last fact, according 
to Hegel, proves the finitude or imperfection of the 
form of social unity found in the family, sacred as it is 
within its own limited sphere ; and the immortality of 

1 Chapter titles in Ethical Studies. 

2 This is not strictly correct. Society has not yet been recognised. 
The right of the individual holds against other individuals — not against 
society. 






HEGELIANISM AND ETHICS 209 

the State is held to furnish a significant contrast. 
Before the State, however, we reach what Hegel calls 
the " Civic Community." This is civil society, not 
society in an indefinite sense, as pleasure-seeking or as 
a scene of formal intercourse and courtesy, but society 
as legally organised — as organised (perhaps) for the re- 
cognition and defence of those individual rights which 
constitute the first third (A) of the ethical treatise. 
If in the Family natural passion is controlled and 
transformed to be the vehicle not of the lowest but of 
the highest type of love — the moral institution solving 
in a sense the problems of abstract morality — so, too, 
in society the free play of private interests, being duly 
controlled, gives a richer life to the State. Hegel in 
his maturer days is not a Socialist. He condemns 
Plato for suppressing that subjectivity which is 
one element in the general weal. But Hegel is a 
Prussian bureaucrat; he repudiates the merely indi- 
vidualistic conception of the "civic community," and 
insists on the rights and duties of the State. Vaccina- 
tion is a minor instance mentioned by Hegel ; the most 
important instance is education. In Hegel's time 
Prussia had begun that career which has resulted in 
placing her at the head of European Powers, and she 
began it with Hegel's approbation. 1 Our own country, 
in its hesitating adoption of the same policy, has given 
a blow to individualistic ethical theory in Great 
Britain, whether intuitionalist or utilitarian, from 
which it still reels. The State, insisting upon educating 
the children, has come forward as a moral institution. 
But theory among us tends to regard morality as 

1 Against the extravagantly vehement protests of William von Hum- 
boldt. 

14 



2io HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

simply an individual concern, social action being 
relegated to the guidance of expediency or force. 
Only the High Church Anglicans believe heartily in 
the control of the individual ; but the priestly control 
which they desire is a thing very imperfectly moral. 
An older instance of anti - individualist policy is 
furnished by a Poor Law. A modern instance, again, is 
the Free Library, by which Mr. Herbert Spencer is 
conscious of being cruelly oppressed, or those Factory 
Acts which, designed to regulate the work of women 
and children, have done so much to give legal shap- 
ing and limits to the work of men. Hegel classifies 
and subdivides as follows : (a) The system of wants, 
or economic society — here Hegel has nothing very 
distinctive to bring forward; (6) Administration of 
Justice ; (c) Police [we note the bureaucrat here], and 
the " Corporation," as translators call it ; Hegel's 
meaning seems to be the Trade Guild, which in his 
time had not yet quite accomplished its disappearance 
from modern life. 

The third division of social or institutional morality 
is the State, in contrast with the merely civic com- 
munity. From the idea of the unity of the State 
Hegel deduces a priori the necessity of monarchy; 
and although in one passage the King is described as 
simply dotting the is, yet Hegel, as a good Prussian 
citizen, distinctly favours the Prussian rather than 
the English conception of a constitutional monarchy — 
or, as he says, the Notion favours Germany. A similar 
a priori deduction postulates a professional army 
rather than an armed nation ; the defence of the State 
is a distinct function, and ought to be the affair of a 
distinct class. Hegel's admiration for war and cor- 



HEGELIANISM AND ETHICS 211 

responding contempt for the enthusiasts of peace are 
rather startling. The truth is, he idolises the nation- 
state of the present. There is hardly a shadow of 
difference between his doctrine that "the real is the 
rational" — as he applies it — and the old superstition 
that " whatever is is right." " The owl of Minerva," 
as he tells us in his Philosophy of Right, and as his 
English advocates love to quote, " only takes its flight 
when the shades of night are gathering." "When 
philosophy paints its grey in grey, one form of life has 
become old." Are we really gainers by this owlish 
wisdom, which depicts the past or the present as the 
absolute and perfect, pouring forth unmeasured scorn 
upon all dreams of a different and better future ? It is 
well to assure ourselves that past history is not a mere 
aberration, and that morality has not been invented 
within the last five minutes by some revolutionary 
talker or journalist. Hegel — as was said of Carlyle in 
his time — may be a valuable alterative to our insular 
thought. But is not the philosopher every whit as 
one-sided as the fanatic whom he despises ? To say of 
the heavy yoke of dubious custom, it had to be, is to 
make a bold assertion. When you proceed, speaking 
for Absolute Reason, to say further, it has to be — that 
is fatalism. Hegel's optimism at this point shows itself 
to be what we have called it — a remorseless naturalism. 
It was doubtless to him and others a comfortable faith 
that all dissatisfaction with the present is due to 
philosophical incompetence. 

One even questions what is gained by contrasting 
the Civic Community and the State, in obedience to 
the trichotomy formula. Service of the State as such 
seems confined to the dramatic self-devotions of war. 



1/ 



212 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

These are indeed the chief moral benefits accruing from 
that dreadful evil, and they have their high excellence. 
But if the peace state — the so-called " civic community " 
— is a moral institution, positive as well as negative in 
its action, training the young, and slowly, as occasion 
serves, building up good customs into a fabric of wise 
and just law — is it not a somewhat pettifogging tech- 
nicality which assigns less " renown " to the " victories " 
of such endeavour than to the service of the " State " 
amidst military pomp and glory ? 

What is really moral in these idealist ethics can be 
more clearly recognised in the teaching of Green than 
upon Hegel's own pages. It is a deep and valuable 
truth that, besides recognising, on the one hand rights, 
on the other hand a consciousness of duty, in the 
individual, we ought to recognise kindred rights and a 
kindred consciousness of duty in the State. The State 
will then subordinate the individual, while acknow- 
ledging a sphere into which it must not penetrate. 
We may even claim that individual rights and duties 
are not truly known or safely established until they 
are seen as elements in the development of something 
greater and wider than themselves. Whether the 
dialectic method is of real service here or anywhere 
else, seems very doubtful. Green makes no appreciable 
use of it. To a great extent he goes back upon Kant. 
Like Kant, he knows two sides of the shield of reason 
— theoretical and practical, reason as seen in know- 
ledge and as seen in conduct. He is not concerned to 
vindicate social ethics by discrediting personal ethics ; 
nor, again, does he teach that, in passing to religion, we 
transcend morality, and land in a region " beyond good 
and evil." 



HEGELIANISM AND ETHICS 213 

To Hegel it is only the abstract understanding 1 
which accepts the contrast of good and evil as absolute 
or fixed. Mr. Bradley has always concurred in this 
view of Hegel's ; Green, we believe, never did. If one 
cared to adopt some of Hegel's methods, we might say 
that the very definition of a moral consciousness is the 
consciousness of a contrast which cannot be set aside 
or transcended. It is idle to propose to be moral on 
the understanding that morality is relatively binding, 
while on a deeper analysis it is marked out as a 
merely passing phase of the human or rather of the 
absolute spirit. Such morality is immorality. Discords 
may heighten the effect of a subsequent concord, but 
evil is no ingredient in good. Of course when we say 
this we incur responsibility for the old burdens and 
problems of the human conscience. Hegel, on the 
contrary, escapes these. If it be true that evil arises 
with automatic necessity in the development of reason 
— if it be true that evil (or the consciousness of evil) is 
simply the analogue of the Finite — if it is merely the 
manifestation of that other implied in the identity 
of what is self -identical, or of that difference which is 
organically involved in the unity of the universe — 
then evil is not evil at all; it is a form of good — 
deeply but not impenetrably disguised. By denying 
the real evilness of evil, you evade " the burden of the 
mystery," but you also forfeit the blessedness of good 
and the hope of salvation. 

The English adherents of Hegel are fond of statiDg 
the principle of his ethics in the formula, die to live. 
This formula is of course rooted in the dialectic upon 
which Hegel builds up his entire system. When 

1 Phenomenology, p. 359. 



214 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

quoted in the region of ethics, it implies that things 
are not what they seem ; that the longest way round 
may be the nearest way home ; that trial, pain, failure, 
[and sin ?] are good things to those who are duly 
exercised thereby; that limits are not mere limits to 
us; that self is fulfilled, not beaten down, in social 
service. This strikes a deeper note than we hear from 
Hegel himself, at least within the Philosophy of Right. 
Hegel is not fond of dwelling on the thought, I — or, 
you — must die to live. As we have said, he is im- 
patient of the subjective phases of morality, although 
he books them in his encyclopaedic catalogue. In 
dealing with them, he insists almost exclusively upon 
the baffling contradictions with which they are, or 
may plausibly be said to be, associated. Morality is 
[known to us as] a progress towards goodness, full of 
struggle ; if the ideal were reached, morality, it is said, 
would collapse. Morality says, Duty ought to be done. 
According to Hegel, this implies that duty is not done 
at all — it only ought-to-be. A less superfine reasoning 
will accept the moral law as proclaiming an un- 
conditional good — one valid even if not obeyed, while 
assuredly not becoming less good if it is fulfilled. 
It is another question whether the conception of the 
good as what merely ought to be fulfilled is adequate to 
its full contents. Idealism holds strong ground when 
it insists that morality implies as its background a 
religious faith in the reign and triumph of goodness, a 
belief in goodness as the greatest among actualities 
and powers. But idealism becomes weak again when 
it treats this fulfilment or complement of moral law as 
its negation. Hegel further regards the advance by 
negation, with all that he ascribes to it, as a universal 



HEGELIANISM AND ETHICS 215 

automatic process. Life must flower from death, and 
the positive emerge from the negative. When he is 
asked for practical counsel, he says nothing so Christian- 
sounding as " die to live " ; he repeats the cheerful and 
superficial antique advice, " be a citizen of a good 
state." The outer institution, not the inner conscious- 
ness, appears to him significant and safe. " The high 
for earth too high, the heroic for earth too hard, the 
passion that soared from earth to lose itself in the 
sky," find no friend in Hegel. He points out that 
such high-sounding claims and such tumultuous 
passion may be mere hypocritical evasion of the 
definite duties of earth, mere fantastic contempt for its 
definite possibilities of happiness — perhaps therefore 
contempt for our only duties and our only happiness. 
Granted; there is danger of hypocrisy and the like; 
but is it philosophical to eliminate the heart of man 
because some fools wear it on their sleeves for daws to 
peck at? That is Hegel's practice, and it leaves a 
great lacuna in his ethical system. He scorns to 
ask, what are the conditions of the subjective emer- 
gence of virtue ? He is not interested in subjective 
virtue. 

This becomes specially manifest when we turn to 
study his views on Free Will. No thinker ever had 
more ample resources for asserting libertarianism than 
Hegel. He insists that, in the very nature of things, 
individual phenomena are casual. Law defines them 
with a priori necessity up to a certain point ; beyond 
that point their detailed embodiment is accidental. 
They might as well not be as be ; but if the reality of 
things is their rationality, this fringe of the non-rational 
in everything that is actual can be nothing except 



216 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

chance. It would have been easy for one holding this 
view to affirm that man's action embodies itself in an 
exercise of choice between opposing possibilities ; and 
we actually find Hegel including caprice among the 
phases of human will. But all his emphasis is given 
to the assertion that freedom cannot be merely caprice. 
He never asks whether, in such a being as man and in 
such a world as the present, moral freedom can arise 
otherwise than by the exercise of moral choice between 
real alternatives, not narrowed to one by any outward 
predetermining force. He never cares to point out 
how the man's hair's-breadth of choice gives all its 
significance to human art and human conduct. Natural 
law gives us machine-made articles ; the very irregu- 
larities of hand-made work are the vehicles for beauty 
and for goodness. But, as we have said, Hegel was 
not interested in the soul, if by soul we mean any- 
thing else than mind. It does not interest him 
to observe that liberty of choice is more than an 
exception to law, being a precondition for higher ful- 
filments of reason. He might agree with us that 
mechanism is not the highest category for interpret- 
ing this universe, or, as he indeed might say, for 
interpreting any part of it ; but the rejection of 
mechanism by non - libertarians is a mere phrase. 
Sooner or later they have to affirm that man is 
mechanically determined. 

Hegel only becomes of service again when we study 
other elements in goodness. He will teach us as 
clearly as any that merely to be undetermined from 
without cannot make us free. And we may add to his 
teaching the further truth that non-determination is to 
be used as the opportunity and vehicle for acquiring 



HEGELIANISM AND ETHICS 217 

true freedom, in self-control, and by the service of 
goodness. 1 

1 Outline contents. [These exactly concur with the section ' ' Mind 
Objective " in the Philosophy of Mind, expanding a little further. The 
expansions are generally omitted here.] 

A. Law (or Abstract Right). 

(a) Property. 

(a) Possession. 

(j8) Use. 

(7) Relinquishment. 

(b) Contract. 

(c) [Right versus] Wrong. 

B. [The] Morality [of Conscience]. 

(a) Purpose [and Responsibility]. 
(&) Intention and Welfare. 

(c) Goodness and Wickedness. [The Good and Con- 
science.] 

C. The Moral Life and Social Ethics. [Ethical Observance.] 

(AA) The Family. 

(a) Marriage. 

(6) Family Means. 

(c) Education of Children and disruption of the 
Family. 
(BB) Civil Society. 

(a) The System of Wants. 

(6) Administration of Justice, 
(c) Police and Corporation. 

(CC) The State. 

(a) Constitutional Law. 

I. The State Constitution. 
(a) The Prince. 
(6) The Executive. 
(c) The Legislature. 
II. Foreign Policy. 
(/3) International Law. 

(7) Universal History. 



CHAPTEE XIII 

Hegelianism and ^Esthetics 

Litbratuke. — A. Briefly, in the Philosophy of Mind (Mr. 
Wallace's translation), where Art is expounded. The fuller Lectures 
onJEsthetics are represented by "three partial reproductions .... in 
English, namely, Mr. Bryant's translation of Part II. — New York, 
Appleton & Co. ; Mr. Kedney's short analysis of the entire work 
— Chicago, Griggs & Co., 1885 ; and Mr. Hastie's translation of 
Michelet's short ' Philosophy of Art,' prefaced by Hegel's Intro- 
duction, partly translated and partly analysis." A fourth is fur- 
nished by Mr. Bosanquet's translation — with an introductory essay 
and some notes — of Hegel's Introduction [" Phil, of Fine Art "] ; 
the above sentence is a quotation from Mr. Bosanquet's preface. 

B. The Lectures themselves and some sections in the Phenomen- 
ology (" die Kunsfc Eeligion," etc.). 

G. Mr. Bosanquet's History of JEsthetics ; Professor W. P. Ker's 
essay on Tlie Philosophy of Art — in Essays in Philosophical Criticism 
— vivid and luminous. 

^Esthetic theory is little in favour in our land of 
common-sense. Mr. A. J. Balfour, who criticises other 
manifestations of "Transcendentalism," does not con- 
sider that its theories of the beautiful are worthy of 
more than a contemptuous footnote. His own analysis 
of the perception of beauty is purely sceptical and 
destructive. He doubts whether any such thing as 
beauty can be proved to exist. He feels certain that 
most of our supposed sesthetic admirations are due to 

218 



HEGELIANISM AND ESTHETICS 219 

the concealed working of imitation and the love of 
fashion. One expects Mr. Balfour to dismiss the whole 
aesthetic fact or idea as a fraud, when suddenly " like a 
man in wrath his heart stands up and answers, I have 
felt," and we are astonished to learn that, athwart the 
perverse workings of natural causes, a manifestation of 
the Divine glory reaches our souls in beauty, more 
particularly in the beauty of nature. Never was there 
a clearer case of Gredibile est quia ineptum est; 
certum est quia impossibile. Others must hold that 
very imperfect attempts at a philosophy of the 
beautiful are better than such a blending of sceptical 
analysis with credulous assertion. 

We are prepared by Kant's grouping for Hegel's 
method of treatment. According to Kant, beauty is a 
realisation of Final Cause [which perhaps means less 
that " A thing of beauty is a joy for ever," than that 
beautiful objects are systematic wholes, all of whose 
detail subserves the unity]. In contrast with scientific 
knowledge of nature, which never can be complete — 
in contrast with morality, where the law of reason 
bridles but cannot transform the workings of passion, 
or, where at the best the good is struggled after — art 
or beauty is the ideal in the sensuous ; unity attained ; 
system realised. Only, whereas Kant regards this pre- 
eminent triumph of unity as vitiated in a special sense 
by man's subjectivity — since beauty cannot be shown 
to be a necessary feature in a world of orderly processes 
— his characteristic scepticism is no less character- 
istically set aside by Hegel. To Hegel, beauty is a 
revelation of the nature of things, or — which for Hegel 
has almost the same meaning — a revelation of the 
power of thought. Just as he believes that in the 



220 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

humblest piece of mechanism there is somehow latent 
the spirit of Reason or of wholeness — whose presence 
manifests itself in the emergence, soon or late, of a 
contradiction, vitiating even the most "self-evident" 
explanations which treat a part as if it were an isolated 
whole — so he believes that in beauty this union with 
the whole takes visible shape and sensuous embodi- 
ment. Much more than every mechanism does every 
beautiful object throw light upon the whole of things. 
Mechanisms show that they are imperfect apart from 
a wider whole : beautiful objects exhibit the perfection 
of the whole embodied in a single significant image. 
Hegel seeks a proof of this by means of the assertion 
that beauty [art beauty] exhibits the power of thought 
to deal with an absolute content. Art for him belongs 
to the nature of religion. "Religion" is the general 
name which he gives to the "Absolute Spirit" — that 
region where we deal with the whole as a whole, with 
the perfect as perfect, or with thought as thought. In 
art, he tells us, we have the idea objectified sensuously 
and immediately; in religion proper we have it sub- 
jectively, in emotion and in Vorstellung -thought ; in 
philosophy we have it in the form of true thought, 
which is both more fully subjective than any emotion 
or any Vorstellung, and more truly objective than any 
natural sensuous object. 

Hegel's Philosophy of Art receives a twofold praise 
from Mr. Bosanquet. Partly, as already noted, he 
commends its excellent remarks in detail; this is to 
praise Hegel as an essayist. But partly also he ad- 
mires the book because it may serve as a good intro- 
duction to Hegel's system. Such praise as this gives 
one pause. Is it not significant if a Hegelian philosophy 



HEGELIANISM AND ESTHETICS 221 

of art teaches at least as much regarding philosophy 
proper as regarding art proper ? Certainly Hegel, here 
as always, keeps his general principles fully in view. 
In the first place, he is anxious to show that the Idea 
(" Totality ") is found embodied in the beautiful. In 
the second place, he is anxious to show that the various 
phases of art arrange themselves in a regular sequence 
of contrasts. And that is all. Whether art or beauty 
adds anything to our conception of the Absolute, he 
does not inquire. His conception of thought as not 
simply the predominant partner but the universal 
essence in existence, robs the phases of the Philosophy 
of Spirit of most of their interest. Yet surely we 
ought to learn from them something fresh ? 1 Of course 
beauty is not set aside by Hegel any more than he sets 
aside goodness. There are forms of art, just as there 
are moral institutions, which gain his respect as 
actualities. On the other hand, when we come to con- 
sider religion, we shall find it hard to verify in religion 
as such — and as contrasted with philosophical thought 
— any value for Hegel. There are ethnic religions, but 
they are " creeds outworn " ; and, while Christianity is 
politely described as "absolute religion," the absolute 
religion, when distilled into pure thought, scarcely 
resembles historical Christianity, which latter is of 
service only to the unthinking popular mind. 2 Yet 
surely even the most and the best that Hegel says for 
the realisations of the idea is inadequate. It is hardly 

1 Or is it the peculiar glory of ethics to serve as a literal revelation of 
absolute truth ? Aud may we permit beauty and all else to be in- 
definitely transmuted in the Absolute, so long as we know with assur- 
ance that God is good ? 

2 See below, Chapter XV. 



222 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

enough to be told, they are phases, or to be told further 
that their own subordinate phases — with the help 
perhaps of a little judicious pressure — pack neatly 
together in the recognised way. 

The beauty of nature is dismissed by Hegel some- 
what brusquely. In the Introduction he remarks that 
nature stands lower than the lowest manifestations of 
[human] mind, and that natural beauty is therefore 
essentially inferior to art. This is surely a case of 
ignoratio elenchi. In perceiving nature to be beautiful, 
we transcend the point of view from which nature can 
be described as merely natural. It becomes to us a 
manifestation of mind and a work of God. Mere 
nature is an unreal abstraction — the reality is nature 
as a manifestation of spirit. Hegel knows this well ; 
in fact, it is his own teaching ; but the ground of his 
confidence in regarding " nature " as an abstraction is 
mainly that we are here. His Theism on the most 
favourable view is too thin and too vague to allow 
him to regard nature as a work of mind independently 
of the human mind. His God is too little objective to 
have His presence traced when He is not obviously 
working through the finite spirit of man. But since 
the days of Wordsworth it has been common property 
that we get closest to nature's spiritual meanings when 
the distracting influence of our fellow-men is least. 
Hence, while art beauty is of less significance in a 
spiritual religion, the beauty of nature has become 
profoundly important in these latter days to all re- 
ligious minds. 

Returning a little later in a special section to the 
subject of natural beauty, Hegel places his disparage- 
ment of nature upon somewhat different grounds. 



HEGELIANISM AND AESTHETICS 223 

Beauty must be looked for in nature ; for nature is the 
" first reality " of the Idea (its " higher reality " being 
the human spirit, with its works, artistic and other). 
We find beauty in nature chiefly in living forms. This 
is an interesting reminiscence of Kant, and an interest- 
ing attempt to blend the two unconnected sides of his 
Critique of Judgment. In contrast with the lower 
beauty of symmetry in the crystal (seen again in art in 
the region of architecture), we find higher expressive- 
ness in the living body as the phenomenal realisation 
of the unity of the soul or life. It is a specimen of 
Hegel's idealistic assumptions — or of the steadiness of 
his idealistic faith — that he should insist on regarding 
the body as a congruous expression of the soul ; just as 
he considers the human body not an accidental emblem, 
but necessarily the very highest phenomenal expression 
of reason. . Here, then, Hegel would have us look for 
natural beauty — in beautiful forms of life. 1 And we 
find it ; but it proves to be an imperfect thing, partly 
because (even in man, with his more expressive coun- 
tenance and blushing skin) we only see the outward 
manifestation, not the inward life-unity, partly because 
everything natural depends upon external and so far 
accidental conditions. Thus the beautiful body may be 
pinched and starved for lack of food. Only the work 
of art lives in a realm of unchanging beauty, superior 
to most if not absolutely to all natural accidents. 
Once again we must ask whether Hegel has not been 
rendered obsolete by Wordsworth. Hegel's descrip- 
tion may serve well enough for the beauty of rich 
and cultivated nature : what shall we say of the 

1 The beauty of vegetable life — flowers, fruit, trees, forests— seems 
rather slurred over. 



224 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

modern taste for mountaineering ? Is it a mere 
aberration ? 

When we pass in Hegel to the phases of art, we 
have two series, more or less modified : one for art in 
general; the other a sequence of the special arts. In 
general, art is said to have progressed from symbolic 
art through classical to romantic art. Or, as we might 
paraphrase this, it has passed from inartistic art 
through artistic art to an art which is more than 
artistic, and which therefore cannot embody all its mean- 
ings. The special arts come in the sequence — Archi- 
tecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music, Poetry. Archi- 
tecture is the characteristically symbolic art. It is 
kindred to those rude stones which expressed the piety 
of early and pre-artistic ages. Here Hegel is probably 
misled by his authorities in supposing that the stones 
in question ranked as symbols to those who actually 
worshipped them in the Stone Age. It is a defect in 
the essayist's method of penetrating to truth, that he is 
a good deal at the mercy of any fine interpretation 
which occurs to him. Yet it is difficult to tie down 
an idealist to an error on a question of fact. He 
can always hold that an sick, and from some more 
authoritative point of view, truth was as he stated it,, 
and Stonehenge, e.g., wets a great collection of symbols. 
In a more advanced age, we have artistic temples, in 
which the religious meaning of this art of stone masses 
is still obvious. Sculpture is the classical art par 
excellence, and it has its characteristic manifestation in 
the production of a Divine image in a fair human form 
— solid or real in space, or, as it were, safely fixed in 
absolute embodiment, but without colour except in the 
material. Greek religion took its gods from the artists 



HEGELIANISM AND ESTHETICS 225 

as it took its scriptures from Homer. The work of art 
was the absolute and adequate realisation of its attitude 
towards the Divine. When a higher type of religion 
came in contact with the classical world, the old gods 
fell without a struggle. Here again Hegel is probably 
wrong — but is the error of any great importance ? — in 
supposing that Greek statues were without colour. It 
is doubtful, too, whether he does justice to the deeper 
elements in Greek religion ; and this is a graver matter. 
We all know the man who gets identified with one 
particular line of activity, and is forced to adhere to it, 
even when he would fain make a change, because the 
public has catalogued him, and will not be perplexed 
with cross entries. So to Hegel the Greek is the artist 
par excellence, and if the Greek is religious, he must 
be artistically religious, with all the consequences and 
with all the weaknesses that such a position entails. 
Probably Greek religion was affected by the hyper- 
trophy of the Hellenic art consciousness, but it will 
not do to omit contrary evidence, or to assume the 
full normality of the predominance of the art temper 
in Greece, when we see it overmastering religion. 
There remain the three romantic arts — first, painting, 
where reality is represented in a more ideal form by a 
merely coloured surface ; secondly, music, where art 
passes altogether out of space [Mr. Bosanquet thus 
interprets Hegel's references to a quivering point], and 
lives, as it were ideally, in mere time ; finally, poetry, 
where sensuous beauty counts for little [Hegel is pre- 
pared to say, goes for nothing], and the beauty of ideas 
remains. On the whole, Hegel seems right in this last 
matter. When Tennyson sings his song of " swallow, 
swallow," the beautiful image of the bird rises before 
r 5 



226 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

the mind, and we have a thrill of aesthetic pleasure. 
Take the noun as a verb, however, and think of swallow- 
ing food — the beauty of the words vanishes, over- 
borne by the commonness of their signification. Again, 
Matthew Arnold quotes as a sample of a rhythm 
grateful to English or German ears — 

"Siehst sekr sterbeblasslich aus, 
Doch getrost ! du bist zu Haus." 1 

Will any reader lay his hand upon his heart, and say 
that in themselves these are beautiful sounds? Un- 
doubtedly, within the limits of the material (i.e., first, 
language as significant of ideas ; secondly, the particular 
language used), the poet ought to make his verse grace- 
ful and musical. But when it is hinted that Shelley 
can write witching verses with no particular meaning, 
a doubtful compliment is paid to the poet. Such lines 
in a sense might be beautiful, but they would not be 
poetry. 

The three romantic arts are supposed as a whole to 
be later than the other arts. Once again this seems 
a very questionable position in the light of fact. We 
moderns cannot criticise ancient paintings, because — in 
spite of their art "immortality" — their material has 
mostly crumbled away with the lapse of time; but, 
judging from the extraordinary merit of fragmentary 
remains like those of Pompeii — second-rate work of 
their period, as practised by the artists of a little Italian 
provincial town — we must hesitate to proclaim our 
modern superiority. And is poetry, the oldest form 
of literature, so modern an art? Must we thrash 

1 Quoted with rapture for its " rhythm" by Matthew Arnold, Essays 
in Criticism, p. 150. 



HEGELIANISM AND ESTHETICS 227 

out again the endless controversy of moderns versus 
ancients ? Only in one art can we claim unquestion- 
able superiority,namely, in music, and that on the ground 
of our extrinsic advantages in technique. Instrumental 
music is a modern creation. The music of the ancients, 
always wedded to words and not perfectly disentangled 
from the dance, 1 was to a symphony or a sonata what 
a banjo is to the mighty organ or to the complex 
harmony of the orchestra. 

Hegel has classified the arts partly by the art-idea 
of expressiveness, partly under the obsession of the 
contrast of subject and object. A humbler but more 
practical treatment might be content to group the 
forms of beauty in their relation to human uses, some- 
what as follows : — First, we might place architecture 
at the head of all the arts and crafts — that of dress not 
omitted — by which use is made beautiful. Secondly, 
we might name the arts of pure creative beauty — not 
use idealised, but the ideal followed for its own sake. 
Thirdly, we have beauty recognised in nature. Which 
is the greatest ? (Is there anything gained by such 
a discussion ?) Much is to be said for the opinion 
that art is most truly estimated when viewed as the 
idealisation of the useful. If we adopt this view, we 
shall agree with Kuskin that architecture must always 
be the fundamental art. There is no more conclusive 
proof of vulgarity than the disposition to treasure up 
a few beautiful things in cabinets, while we are con- 
tent to let comfort displace beauty in the things of 
daily life. To endimancher one's self is as thoroughly 
bad in art, as a religion for Sunday which has no 

1 Why has Hegel omitted dancing from the arts ? In the Phenomeno- 
logy the religious procession at least has its place. 



228 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

effect on the other days of the week is bad in morals. 
Compromise, no doubt, is the highest attainment we 
can reach in serving the beautiful. It will not always 
be possible miscuere utile clulci. But, just as a 
religious view of beauty in nature believes in its 
ubiquity, in spite of its shining through into our 
minds at certain points only, so a moral view of art 
will teach us not to cultivate beauty on rare holidays, 
but, so far as we can, to make the whole of life a poem. 
And while beauty stands lower than goodness, goodness 
which ignores beauty is very imperfectly good. Here 
again we must be content if we can recognise distinct 
aspects of the ideal. We must not demand that the 
aspects should always manifestly pass into a unity. 
Beauty and goodness are separate ; art ceases to be art 
if it works directly for moral purposes. But we need 
both; and idealism may well remind us that both 
belong to the nature of things or to the workings of 
reason. We may arrange the two in a definite order 
as superior and inferior, but we must recognise the 
higher as incorporating the lower, not superseding it. 
Even in modern industrial life, with its organised 
hideousness in dwellings, in factories, in masculine 
dress, we see everywhere, however unadorning in 
actual result, things which have no motive except 
ornament. Even the chimney-stalk or the mill may 
have its poor attempt at a cornice. These groping 
efforts are the legible signature of the Ideal. 

But the idealisation of the useful, though it may be 
the chief thing in art, cannot stand alone. If we love 
to make useful things beautiful, then we must love, 
so far as we have opportunity, to make or acquire 
beautiful things which are not useful: else our love 



HEGELIANISM AND ESTHETICS 229 

for beauty is shallow. And so again, if we are lovers 
of natural beauty, we shall also love to make our own 
work beautiful. It is unnecessary to endorse the high- 
flown claim that art is superior to nature in point of 
beauty. Only in relation to ourselves can it be said 
that art stands higher. We are too near our own life, 
amid the actual and the useful, to discern its ideal 
meaning. We cannot scan the universe in those grand 
proportions in which all discords are resolved to 
harmony. So we create a little conventional human 
world of beauty upon the level of our own eyes; it 
may mean little in itself, but it means much to us. 
And, as Browning has said, in enjoying our own efforts 
we learn to appreciate more fully the beauty round 
about us. If indeed God had made His world — men 
and women, flowers, birds, fruits, animals, landscapes — 
fundamentally ugly, it would be useless for art to ride 
forth knight-erranting in order to show how things 
ought to have been made. Since they are made 
beautiful, it is for art to disengage the types from 
the details in which {for us) they are apt to be lost, 
presenting them — according to the limits and oppor- 
tunities of the sundry art materials — in significant and 
characteristic attitudes. We must remember, indeed, 
that there is another cognate category. Everything 
which exists, we may say, shows the marks of the 
ideal, since it is either beautiful, more or less, or else 
more or less comical, or both beautiful and comical. 
The artist and the caricaturist are alike — if not in 
equal measure — ministers of the ideal. The latter's 
art is easier and also lower; but, if rightly practised 
and limited, it has its own place. During our present 
imperfect civilisation, men of the Western races are 



230 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

much more plainly susceptible of the idealisation of 
the caricaturist than of that which makes or finds us 
beautiful. But we may hope that this is a mark of 
temporary evils. The beauty of human life ought not 
always to lie so deeply hidden. 

Hegel divides and contrasts classical and romantic, 
not idealist and realist. We may regard the two 
groupings as furnishing very nearly pairs of syno- 
nyms ; but, from the point of view of idealism at least, 
formal realism is not a kind of art, but the negation 
of art. Or it is a polar extreme, a limit in a certain 
direction. If reached, it would imply the cessation 
of art; but, so long as it is not reached, art sways 
between these two extremes — an idealism, in which 
fact is suppressed and generalised so as to make plain 
paths for our sympathies ; and a realism, in which we 
flee from the conventionalities of ordinary idealist 
treatment, and make sure of rich material, whether 
or not we can handle it worthily. The handling is 
the art ; beauty is form, not substance, and a good 
song is better than a bad epic ; but the ideal idealism 
will appropriate all materials, re-embodying them so 
as to manifest their beauty and meaning. How many 
books we may regard as attempts to answer a riddle ! 
" You say you cannot sympathise with such and such 
action — you condemn it unheard ? Well, I am going 
to show you that it is natural, characteristic, beauti- 
ful, when its circumstances are explained and rightly 
understood. Will you really disparage my Dorothea 
Brooke ? Will you really slander my Diana Merrion ? " 
For this as for other reasons, art grows more complex 
as evolution proceeds. The easier themes are worked 
out and worn threadbare ; late comers must use more 



HEGELIANISM AND AESTHETICS 231 

complex machinery if they are to make sesthetic im- 
pressions upon us. But as there are reactions against 
conventional types of beauty, so there come to be 
movements of reaction against undue elaborateness ; 
and a higher stage in evolution retrenches the com- 
plexity which was necessary at a lower stage. Thus 
mind ever and again returns upon itself. 

No part of man's nature (which is God's image) can 
safely be starved; and, so far as it is true that the 
English people " entered the prison of Puritanism," 
we have paid a heavy penalty for doing so. If we 
had been a more artistic people we might have been 
less Mammonite. Should we have been less pleasure- 
loving ? Art has the twofold effect of developing and 
of controlling the love of pleasure. Much depends 
upon the maintenance of a due balance between these 
two tendencies. Art is the idealisation — if you will, 
the redemption — of pleasure considered as a natural 
incident in the human psychology. What was 
originally a mere perishing sensuous particular be- 
comes of abiding significance when it refines. On this 
point, once more, we have nothing better to hope for 
in practical life than compromise. It is impossible to 
relax one's self effectually over the Hundred Best Books. 
The art which appeals to the people must be simple ; 
the pleasures of the people will always be a shade 
rough, if not coarse. When we can discern even a 
leavening of beauty, we may be satisfied that some- 
thing good has been accomplished. 

Once again, in discussing Evolution we inquired 
whether a belief in the evolution of man from nature 
did not point to our acceptance of " secondary qualities " 
as equally real with "primary qualities." These 



232 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

secondary qualities are the seat of the beautiful ; and 
the perception of beauty is a refutation of materialism 
in any proper or strict sense of that word. As, sub- 
jectively, art is the idealisation of pleasure, so, 
objectively, beauty is the spiritualisation of material 
nature. While unsophisticated empiricism may claim 
to regard some things as beautiful and others as ugly, 
idealism teaches us that, looked at from the right point 
of view, all things are beautiful. 

According to the lowest conceivable empiricist view, 
beauty is the organic source of pleasure to one of the 
senses. 1 It is already an advance, if also a sophistica- 
tion, when beauty is recognised as a secondary product 
in psychical evolution by means of association. Within 
the limits of the method of individual psychology — at 
any rate — this doctrine of beauty explains beauty away ; 
not being an original psychological element, it is treated 
as a hallucination. We cannot possibly admit that 
casual association is the only source of a sense of the 
beautiful ; but as little can we exclude association from 
playing some part in aesthetic pleasure. " The dear — 
the brief — the for ever remembered" of which Thackeray 
speaks, 2 are all or mostly treasures and pleasures of 
association. Higher senses may produce effects inde- 
pendently of it : lower senses pass into the region of 
the beautiful by means of its help. We can hardly 
call scents beautiful in themselves ; by association they 

1 The present writer can remember struggling to formulate that 
precious doctrine as a very young student, when he was in rebellion 
against first lessons in metaphysics upon the lines of the Scottish 
philosophy. 

2 Roundabout Papers, quoted in Dr. John Brown's Horce Subsecivce, 
2nd Series, p. 192. 



HEGELIANISM AND AESTHETICS 233 

may thrill our very hearts. And words ? And phrases ? 
Can we draw any hard and fast line between aesthetic 
effects and accidental pleasures due to association ? Is 
not the truth this, that beauty is primarily sensuous ; 
else, no beauty at all; but that beauty grows and 
evolves and becomes alive with spiritual suggestions ? 
Some of these latter, though poor specimens, are found 
in the associations of the Allison-Jeffrey theory. 
Beauty is one of the experiences of a spiritual being. 
Man's spiritual nature leads him to immerse himself 
with delight in the sensuous, because of its fair material 
qualities. But his spiritual nature will not let him halt 
there. Beauty in the end includes those things which 
a developing spiritual being finds to be beautiful. 

Mr. Herbert Spencer's doctrine, that beauty evolves 
out of play, seems to be an interesting and accurate 
archaeological note, but throws no light upon the 
spiritual meanings of beauty. These are invisible at 
first. It is in the higher members of a series that we 
perceive the drift and tendency of an evolution. It is 
the higher ranges of aesthetic experience, not its poor 
beginnings, which show what beauty is. 

NOTE. 

Hegel's " Division op the Subject " (Mr. Bosanquet's 
translation). 

1. The Condition of Artistic Presentation in the Correspond- 

ence of Matter and Plastic Form. 

2. Part I. The Ideal. 

3. Part II. The Types of Art. 

(a) Symbolic Art. 
(/3) Classical Art. 
(y) Romantic Art. 



234 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

4. Part III. The Several Arts, 
(a) Architecture. 
03) Sculpture. 
(y) Kornantic Art. 
i. Painting. 
ii. Music, 
iii. Poetry. 



CHAPTER XIV 

Hegelianism and History 

Literature. — Hegel's Philosophy of History is translated by 
Sibree, and summarised by Professor Morris in his series of German 
Philosophical Classics. The Lectures on the History of Philosophy 
are also translated (by Miss E. S. Haldane). Parts of the Philo- 
sophy of Religion (see Chap. XV.), of the ^Esthetics (pp. 218, 233), 
and of the Phenomenology contain historical materials. 

In proceeding to discuss Hegel's attitude towards his- 
tory, we are retracing the ground covered (or to be 
covered) in the departments of the Philosophy of 
Spirit. On the other hand, the problems or difficulties 
which we now encounter are the same which met us in 
the Philosophy of Nature. Hegel has the same arduous 
task to accomplish there and here. He must deduce 
facts, or at least he must account for them in the light 
of pure thought. Real facts physically separated in 
space constitute nature; real events separated from 
each other in time — perhaps we ought to add, not 
barely repeating each other, but forming a progressive 
development — constitute history. It may not be 
possible to draw any absolute contrast between the 
two regions. If modern evolutionary science is founded 
in fact, there is something of development, something 
historical, something spiritual, even in material nature. 



236 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

And yet it remains true, as when Hegel wrote, that on 
the whole natural processes are marked by repetition 
and history by progress. The other portions of the 
Philosophy of Spirit, in which, as we have said, Hegel 
reviews the same ground which has to be studied in 
the light of history, aim at a sort of ideal analysis of 
reality. Or, to use more modern slang, their study is 
statical, not dynamic. If they bring to light definite 
facts, e.g. social institutions, yet they do not introduce 
us to particular details; they can always generalise. 
History is, like nature, a world of details, while it is — 
unlike nature — a world of significant details. So the 
problem emerges again here which caused us hesitation 
or misgivings when we looked at Hegel's Philosophy 
of Nature. Can even the highest philosophical theory 
quite succeed in laying down the law to reality? If 
it is able to draw general outlines, but declines to 
fill them in, how far is this sketching or shading to 
be carried, and how can we justify its being arrested? 
If we assume that we can construe the significant in- 
dividual detail, how shall we act if no detail appears * 
to correspond with our deduction ? Is our deduction 
a mere label ; have we a large liberty of shifting labels 
without philosophical discredit ? 2 

The Philosophy of History deals with the Objective 
Spirit 3 — with morals, or with the ethical institution ; 
the subject of a systematic treatise in the Philosophy 

1 Compare the passage from Michelet in regard to nature, p. 153. 

2 Dr. Pfleiderer put Mark where Baur put Luke and Luke where 
Baur put Mark, but still produces a dualism and a synthesis. Is that 
satisfactory ? 

3 Psychology (or Subjective Spirit) has no history — reasonably enough ; 
but if so, can it be rightly grouped on the same line with other portions 
of the Philosophy of Spirit ? 



HEGELIANISM AND HISTORY 237 

of Right. All three departments of Absolute Spirit 
have their historical development; so all have their 
historical treatment by Hegel, either separately or in 
combination with their systematic exposition. Art has 
a history, 1 and religion, and absolute knowledge or 
philosophy ; hence philosophy has to deal with these 
subjects not merely in abstract analysis, but in the 
sequence of their concrete phenomenal forms. 

There can be no doubt that Hegel's work on his- 
tory has more substantial value by a great deal than 
his Philosophy of Nature. History was a region in 
which he was more at home. The degree of value to 
be attached to Hegel's historical work may be differently 
determined by different disciples or critics, and the 
sources of that value may be variously traced to a 
priori insight, or to a posteriori knowledge, or to both 
cause's) Dr. Stirling seems inclined to impute almost 
unlimited excellence to Hegel's results and to the 
philosophical method used in their attainment. Hegel 
is often led to the facts by the requirements of his 
ideal system. 2 That is surely a doubtful compliment. 
It recalls the boast of a great poet — Dryden — how the 
requirements of rhyme had led to some of his happiest 
poetical turns. Rhyme might do this at times, but it 
was likely oftener to lead to platitudes or irrelevances. 
Thought should lead rhyme, not rhyme thought. I Simi- 

1 No attempt will be made in this chapter to deal with the history of 
Esthetics. 

2 Hegel's principle '"'seems not to have been always for him a canon 
of regulation, but sometimes also an organon of discovery. There are 
several points of view in his ^Esthetic and Philosophy of History, for 
example, to which he appears to have been led in simply prosecuting 
the dialectic of the Notion." — Schwegler, pp. 437, 438. Again compare 
the passage from Michelet on p. 153. 



238 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

larly, ideal meanings ought to be elicited from facts, not 
imposed on them. It is a perilous achievement to con- 
strue or deduce facts that hitherto have been unobserved. 
And yet, so important are general ideas, that any 
scheme may be better, however forced and artificial 
it be, than a planless heaping up of particulars. 
Jowett's praise is also worth recalling. 1 On the 
other hand, a capable if severe philosophical critic of 
Hegel tells us 2 that "it will be time to reconsider 
the claims of the Hegelian logic when some competent 
historian confesses himself content with the account of 
Greek philosophical development " ; the critic goes on 
to express a similar censure on other parts of Hegel's 
work. It would be beyond the province of the present 
writer to express an opinion upon the merits or demerits 
of Hegel in points of historical detail. Buikone may 
continue to believe that philosophy has a great deal to 
do in the way of interpreting history, and yet may 
think that here, as usual, Hegel exaggerates what is 
to be accomplished by deduction, or construction, and 
underrates what is to be learned from specific experience. 
A somewhat unexpected view of Hegel's historical 
work is propounded by Mr. M'Taggart. He finds that 
in those regions Hegel was not at his strongest, but 
rather at his weakest and least authoritative. In anti- 
metaphysical days, when Hegel the philosopher is losing 
ground, Hegel the historian is likely to secure a larger 
proportional meed of praise. Even his a priori ele- 
ments, or some of them, seem to have more in their 
favour when applied to history. The idea of progress 

1 Above, p. 90. 

2 Mr. A. E. Taylor in International Journal of Ethics, April 1901, 
p. 356. 



HEGELIANISM AND HISTORY 239 

by antagonism bewilders us in other regions ; but no 
one can find such a suggestion violent or incredible 
when history is under discussion ; nor can it be denied 
that Hegel accumulated much knowledge of historical 
phenomena and wielded his knowledge with character- 
istic power. But Mr. M'Taggart inverts the usual 
comparisons. He tries to bring Hegel's pretensions 
within more manageable limits — startling as they still 
are when he takes leave of them ; and in seeking to do 
this he would have us be satisfied with the general 
result of the dialectic, while he bids us drop the pre- 
tension (or the illusion) that the principle established 
by philosophy is able to specify its own particulars 
in the region of fact. Therefore, although we know 
clearly that " reality is rational and righteous," yet we 
have no right to say a 'priori in what successive phases 
this righteous reality must find phenomenal embodi- 
ment. Hegel ought to have recognised more fully, 
and stated more clearly than he ever did, that, as a 
historian, he is simply a diligent inductive worker, 
who has written intelligent essays on the broader as- 
pects of history, while he happens further to be the 
author of some remarkable books on metaphysics. The 
greatness of Hegel as a philosopher does not guarantee 
his work as a historian. Errors in history, if such are 
proved, do not really discredit the philosophy. 

The assertion is bold and ingenious, but we cannot 
believe it to be sound. Whether or not the phrase 
" absolute idealism " implies that Hegel is aiming at 
the construction of an absolute philosophy, 1 — Mr. 
M'Taggart may possibly be right in his minimising inter- 
pretation of the epithet " absolute," though we cannot 

1 Hegelian Dialectic, p. 69. Compare above, pp. 34, 161. 



240 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

see that his rendering does it justice, — at any rate, 
Hegel is aiming at that. The whole structure of his 
philosophy implies the proud claim ; and history, like 
everything else, must become a priori if it is to rank 
as philosophical. But there is still more to be said. 
Hegel has taught us that philosophical anatysis re- 
quires us to take the categories or conceptions which 
interpret the world of reality in a certain fixed order. 
We do not say that such an " irreversible sequence " im- 
plies time or implies history. Probably, so far as it is 
legitimate to put the dilemma, whether the dialectic is 
in or out of time, Mr. M'Taggart gives the correct 
answer in affirming that the dialectic is not in time. 
To Hegel the dialectic is a sequence of terms ideally 
implying each other. If the terms can be said to have 
real existence, they co-exist ; theirs is a succession in 
rank or in meaning, not in being. But if time suc- 
cession is not found in the Logic, succession of its 
own sort is vital to it ; and when time appears else- 
where, and the human spirit is watched growing into 
its possessions by the time series or time succession of 
history, is it credible that the two sequences — ideal 
and historical, in thought and in time — should have 
nothing to do with each other ? What else can they be 
but correspondent ? Hegel's premises necessarily carry 
that conclusion. 

Hegel has indeed one means of evasion; and it 
again has come under our notice in looking at his 
treatment of the Philosophy of Nature. It is possible 
to decline responsibility for the deduction of " acci- 
dental " and " contingent " facts. One knows what 
this means in history. The Peloponnesus is roughly of 
the shape of a vine leaf; but can the Philosophy of 



HEGELIANISM AND HISTORY 241 

History be fairly called on to show cause why the 
peninsula 1 must have been of that shape ? On the 
other hand, the particularity of the historical detail is 
of greater scientific importance than the particularity of 
a natural fact, which — at least for our knowledge — 
is simply one of its kind. For nature repeats itself, 
but history progresses. On many grounds, then, it 
would be safer to treat historical " contingency " as due 
to our shortsightedness, than to detect in it an element 
of unreason somehow involved in the development and 
fulfilment of reason. No one can say how far the 
relations of things may penetrate into each other. 
Doubtless, had the Peloponnesus been of any other 
shape, human history would have manifested the 
growth of reason, and Greece would have had her 
glories ; but history would not have been quite what we 
know it. To prove anything absolutely contingent, ab- 
solutely unimportant, is as far beyond our powers as to 
deduce the necessity of particular facts. Once again ; 
it is with the elimination (absolute, or practical) of the 
contingent that science begins. Hegel makes it very 
plain indeed that in his belief philosophy has to do with 
what must be. If, then, Hegel has reduced or elevated 
history into a philosophy of history, are not the facts 
which it deigns to notice certified by their presence in 
the book as non-contingent — significant — essential ? 
And, as we hold Hegel to have been right in believing 
in metaphysics, wrong only in denying or ignoring its 
limits, so also here. He was right in aiming at a 
philosophical treatment of the greater features of his- 

1 To describe any historical event — in contrast with the physical con- 
ditions of history — as "contingent," would be more difficult. I am not 
sure that Hegel has ever done that. 
16 



242 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

tory. He was wrong (as we think) in not marking 
out the limits under which he worked, or in not frankly 
admitting their importance. 

Another consideration may show us how deeply Mr. 
M'Taggart's revision of Hegel's legitimate claims would 
modify the whole view of history associated with Hegel's 
thinking. Hegel traces development in history— the 
development of reason ; and we may say that he has 
a far clearer and deeper insight into the meanings of 
" development " or " evolution " than the average evolu- 
tionary theorist of modern times. What develops must 
be a unity through the whole process of change ; in all 
transformations — no one believes in transformation 
more heartily than Hegel — there must be an identity 
manifesting and fulfilling itself by the process. But, 
according to Mr. M'Taggart, we are thwarted in our 
study of time-developments by the manifoldness of 
history. The ideal clues furnished by philosophy do 
not avail in that region. We have not one historical 
development before us ; we have always to deal with a 
number of parallel developments interfering with each 
other. To put this differently : whatever may be true 
in metaphysical analysis of content as to the victorious 
career of the Notion, yet, when we turn to the time- 
record of humanity, we have no higher category avail- 
able than reciprocity. 1 There may be a great deal of 
truth in Mr. M'Taggart's view as a summary of the 
facts of the case. We, who believe in the limitation of 
human faculty, are quite prepared to find that man's 
science of history will very imperfectly fulfil its own 

1 Mr. M'Taggart hopes much, however, from "a treatment of ab- 
stract qualities rather than actual facts." To abstract qualities the 
Dialectic may — or must — apply. 



HEGELIANISM AND HISTORY 243 

ideal. We are not surprised if it has ragged edges 
or difficult frontier problems. But many of Hegel's 
positions must be given up before such a view can be 
held. In the first place, Hegel conceives that the 
solution of knowledge-problems secures the deter- 
mination of corresponding issues in every region of 
experience. Wherever mankind rises to the faculty of 
philosophising, Hegel is pledged to regard the result- 
ing philosophies as the quintessence of all their history. 
And in regard to the history of philosophy he tells us, 
without the least disguise or ambiguity, that the 
sequence of philosophical ideas is the sequence of 
logical categories. 

Then, secondly, Hegel holds that — philosophy being 
after all the affair of only a few — religion states philo- 
sophical truth as nearly as the multitude are able 
to receive it. It is therefore in the sequence of the 
great religions that we are to trace the inner move- 
ment of the world's life and thought. No doubt Hegel 
calls the religion of Christian civilisation "revealed" 
religion, 1 implying thereby chiefly this, that only in 
Christianity has religion come to itself; the central 
truth of Christianity (as he deems it) — the truth of 
the unity of God and man 2 — being that at which all 

1 " Revel ate rather than revealed," Harris, Hegel's Logic, p. 103. 
"The religion that reveals rather than is revealed," ibid. p. 104. Of 
course Hegel often uses the language of belief in revelation. Probably 
this is only his account of how the unphilosophical must conceive the 
matter. See next chapter. 

2 "Unity or union," says Dr. Morris, Kegel's Philosophy of the State 
and of History, p. 238. We should say not union but unity. We 
believe that Hegel's theory as decisively excludes the ["synthetic"] 
union of God and man in a historical atonement as it affirms their 
inherent and unalterable unity. 



244 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

other religions unsuccessfully aim. Christianity there- 
fore proclaims a God who is known to His inmost 
recesses; other religions, especially the Pantheistic, 
have an unknown God. The historic sequence of 
religions appears then to be a prehistory rather than 
a history proper. It is the embryology of the normal 
religious consciousness. For the whole civilised world, 
that historical sequence is concluded and done with. 1 
At the same time, Hegel believes that the lower 
religions evolved themselves by automatic development 
into the highest religion of all ; and thus their series 
is for him one of the grand processions of reason. In 
the Phenomenology, Hegel called the lower religions 
Nature Religion and Art Religion ; in the Philosophy 
of Religion he says Nature Religion and Religion of 
Spiritual Individuality — each dividing (at least in the 
later treatise) into several historical types. The former 
sees God in nature, the latter in man; Absolute 
Religion sees God both in nature and in man. 2 The 
first group of religions tends to Pantheism and Agnos- 
ticism. They are on the lines of the cosmological 
argument for the Being of God, which — according to 
Hegelian interpretation; and that interpretation has 
a great deal to say for itself — does not point to a 
" first cause " outside the universe, but to an Absolute 
which is the universe ; or, alternatively, to an absolute 
of which you can say nothing more than this, that if 
it is not the universe, it is, unlike it, unknown, un- 

1 Mr. M'Taggart very aptly observes that Hegel has omitted from 
the review of historical religion the inconvenient fact of Mohammedan- 
ism. Of course it forces an entrance into the Philosophy of History. 

2 This and a few following sentences reproduce Dr. Edward Caird 
more directly than Hegel. 



HEGELIANISM AND HISTORY 245 

knowable. The second group of religions tends to 
Dualism. It corresponds to the Design Argument. 
There is no doubt that its God or gods have sharp 
and definite personality ; the question is whether they 
are absolute enough to rank as Divine. The supreme 
phase, Absolute Religion, corresponds to the Ontological 
Argument, or to Christianity, with its spiritual, fully 
self-revealing, all-creating, all-atoning God. Hegel 
does not so clearly apply the trichotomy to the 
historical religions. Beginning with magic and fetich- 
ism x as the lowest form of nature-religion, and there- 
fore the lowest form in which religion is possible — 
the magician controls natural objects, and so initiates 
the long triumphs of spirit — he goes on to recognise 
three phases of Pantheism ; but he interposes a group 
of transitional forms — three in number, however — 
between these and the " religions of spiritual individu- 
ality," which again are three — Judaism, Greece, Rome. 
And as sequel to these — out of Judaism, says Hegel 
in orthodox enough tones ; not as a synthesis of these 
with Pantheism ; if as a synthesis at all, then as 
a synthesis of " Hebraism and Hellenism " — comes 
Christianity. 2 Hegel is still recognised by writers on 
the History or Science of Religion as the first great 
Master of that new and difficult study. We must 
confess what splendid outlines he has drawn, and how 
suggestive his groupings are. But, while the Christian 
demurs to accept the world's religious history as a pure 

1 The phenomena called by this misleading and ambiguous name 
seem to be in reality a phase of the cultus of spirits, and to indicate 
degeneration rather than primitive conditions. 

2 We return to this sequence immediately, in giving a brief outline of 
Hegel's view of history in general. 



246 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

and orderly evolution under normal conditions, 1 the 
scientific worker may well doubt whether, even at 
the present day, with all our added knowledge, any 
systematic construction of the course of the world's 
religious thought is yet possible. So many dif- 
ferent views are plausible ; so little can be called 
certain. 

When we come to the Philosophy of History, we 
have political history to deal with. But Hegel does 
not allow that this constitutes merely one aspect of 
reality among others. From its own point of view, it 
is a totality. There is a development before us — the 
development of freedom ; which for Hegel means 
pretty much the same thing as the development of 
reason. At first one is free ; then a few ; finally 
freedom is extended to all. 2 This " freedom " is almost 
the same thing as moral or civic goodness ; it is self- 
development or self-control. External conditions are 
frankly accepted as affecting and modifying the de- 
velopment, yet not so as to interfere with its essential 
quality. Evolving freedom may be now helped, now 
hindered, by geography, climate, etc. ; still rational 
freedom is what evolves. Here as elsewhere Hegel, 
in comparison with many Hegelians, stands free from 
schematic formalism. 3 

Hegel's position towards great men is neither that 
of the romantic school, who resolve history into a 
string of biographies, nor that of the empiricist scienti- 

1 The Christian position is further treated in the next chapter. 

2 The "formal" and "real freedom" doctrine, however, as applied 
for political purposes, rather hampers this programme. See above, 
p. 80. 

3 Compare, however, the opinion quoted from Dr. Stirling on p. 237. 



HEGELIANISM AND HISTORY 247 

fie school, who find the great man a mere executive 
agent of masterful circumstances. 1 To Hegel the 
great man is indispensable. At the same time he is 
merely an executive agent, acting for the Spirit of the 
Age. On the other hand, the Spirit of the Age needs 
a great man before it can act with any effect. The 
distinctive result of Hegel's point of view is seen in his 
regarding the great man as essentially the good man — 
or, to put this differently, in his ranking greatness 
above goodness. Thus in history as elsewhere we have 
cause to wonder at the passionate coldness of his 
intellectualism and at his remorseless optimism. 

Taking the three different books together, Hegel's 
attitude towards history works out somewhat as 
follows. Our first knowledge of settled governments 
introduces us to the great unprogressive empires or 
civilisations of the East. 2 And, even from the point of 
view of progress, it is a priori expedient that non- 
progressiveness should be embodied in significant 
forms. The religion of these lands is Pantheistic 
and thus still natural; consecrating either the tra- 
ditional civilisation of China, where the Emperor 
alone is a free man and the Emperor alone worships 
heaven, or consecrating the iron rigidity of Indian 
caste, or consecrating (in Buddhism) what Hegel re- 
garded — in accordance with views generally held in 
his time, but since then greatly modified or wholly 
abandoned — as an abstract reaction against the abstract 

1 Mr. "W. D. Howells very fittingly criticised Seeley's Napoleon by 
saying that analysis seemed to find in Napoleon's career nothing more 
than what any competent cavalry officer might have done in his place. 

2 Recent discovery has pushed back much further both in Egypt and 
in Babylonia. Compared with these past civilisations — to say nothing 
of the ages of barbarism — the Chinese empire is but modern. 



248 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

supremacy of the Brahmans and the abstract separa- 
tion of caste from caste. In admitting next a transi- 
tional group of religions, Hegel seems to do partial 
homage to the authority of fact. The religions of 
Persia (light), of Syria (pain), of Egypt (mystery) 
are half spiritual or moral or intellectual, but still 
half natural. The second great group of religions — 
negation or opposite of the first group — are those 
properly spiritual or moral or intellectual — Judaism 
standing for Sublimity, Greece for Art, Rome for 
Utility. In the Philosophy of History the central 
negative region includes two periods — that of Greece 
and that of Rome. As Mr. M'Taggart remarks, Hegel 
" would probably have found no difficulty on his own 
principles in reducing " these to one ; he finds it " sig- 
nificant that Hegel did not think it worth while to do 
so " — implying that even the Master himself may have 
been quite half- conscious that his work in history 
was formally imperfect, and lacked complete scientific 
authority. At this stage in history, some — an aristo- 
cracy—are free, in comparison with the solitary Oriental 
despot. Borne therefore have in this period the oppor- 
tunity of moral self-fulfilment. In regard to religion, it 
is made plain for us that this is a negative period inter- 
posed dialectically between the two affirmatives. Both 
the Phenomenology and the Philosophy of History 
strongly depict the misery of the age as a pre- 
condition — and of course also as promise and potency 
— of the Christian salvation, which there is accord- 
ingly no hesitation in placing under the " Roman 
world." Once more, the History of Philosophy begins 
in this period, i.e., of course, in Greece ; after a brief 
review — one can hardly say, a too brief review — of 



HEGELIANISM AND HISTORY 249 

what was then known regarding the Oriental ap- 
proaches to philosophy. 

The last and highest is the Germanic period. When 
Christianity entered the world, the master secret passed 
into the possession of mankind; but it was not yet 
grasped by thought. In fact, having entered the world 
as a particular truth, known to a particular com- 
munity, who were surrounded by the inheritors of an 
inferior civilisation, it creates a new half truth, not to 
say a new falsehood, — the mediaeval dualism of secular 
and sacred. In history, this was co-ordinated with the 
barbarian inroads — and with Mohammedanism, which 
figures oddly enough merely among the " elements " of 
the " Germanic world." In philosophy, the effect is to 
throw within the highest or post-Christian period the 
period of negation. Hence between the great positive 
constructions of " Greek " and " German " philosophy 
there occurs scholasticism, or what may be called un- 
philosophical philosophy, when authority dictates both 
form (inherited Aristotelianism) and contents (church 
dogma), — when reason must work in fetters. But 
Protestant Christianity, German nationality, and philo- 
sophy, culminating in Hegel's own, are assumed to lead 
to the final synthesis. "The business of the world, 
taking it as a whole, is to become reconciled with mind, 
recognising itself therein ; and this business is assigned 
to the Teutonic world." The principle of reconciliation 
stated by Christianity has been grasped in the terms of 
thought as an all-inclusive spiritual unity. " Philo- 
sophy is the true theodicy .... To this point the 
World-Spirit has come, and each stage has its own 
form in the true system of Philosophy ; nothing is lost, 
all principles are preserved, since Philosophy in its final 



250 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

result is the totality of forms. This concrete idea is 
the result of the strivings of spirit during almost 
twenty-five centuries to become objective to itself, to 
know itself — 

Tantce molis erat, se ipsam cognoscere mentem" 

It can hardly be denied that that is a carnival of 
apriorism ! Indeed, we are constrained to protest 
against it at various points. If history means progress, 
then surely — hard as it may be to know where to 
begin — it is surely perverse to assume that the unpro- 
gressive empires of the East claim a place ? Or if, 
for their greatness, they insist on being noticed, it 
would be well not to shut out the possibility — is it not 
almost a certainty ? — that Asia must yet awake from 
the slumber of ages, and transform the whole face of 
the world. Hegel extends no notice to that conjecture. 
China and India are written down as non- progressive ; 
that is what they exist for. . It is a kind of paradox ; 
for the sake of progress they exist as typical museum 
specimens of the unprogressive. .' The other great 
speculative question in future politics concerns not the 
stagnating civilisations of the East, but the New World 
— the United States, the younger communities of 
colonial birth, and that late-comer, the gigantic infant 
of the European family, Russia. By his references to 
the future greatness of Russia and of the United States 
Hegel escapes the blame of unduly ignoring one ques- 
tion of the politics of the future. He puts the a priori 
prejudice aside in this instance, and pays homage to 
fact. The contrast with the History of Philosophy is 
sufficiently marked. 

The Philosophy of Right in contrast with the 



HEGELIANISM AND HISTORY 251 

Philosophy of History again exhibits exaggerated 
deference to the actual. Hegel there treats the nation- 
state as the highest possible social formation; he even 
— as we have seen — accepts the anarchy of war as the 
normal solution for international disputes. 1 Not on 
ideal grounds merely, but partly in the light of facts, we 
must persist that the manifest goal of history, however 
far removed from us at present, is " the parliament of 
man, the federation of the world " ; the organisation of 
all mankind into a real unity, on a platform of real 
liberty and real equality and fraternity. These are the 
limits set by nature to the progressive movement of 
history. If history lasted beyond that point, pro- 
gress must thenceforth be differently conceived and 
stated. Or else, in order to protract it in its old form, 
there must have been an entrance of other rational 
creatures into the fellowship of human history — 
perhaps by intercourse with other planets, perhaps by 
authentic communication with spirits, e.g. with the 
departed : dreamy and shadowy possibilities or im- 
possibilities. 

In itself, indeed, there is no reason why the attempt 
to divine an a priori formula for history should lead 
the interpreter to regard his own position as definitive 
and beau-ideal. If a man were to place his own time 
midway upon the curve which he traces out — and all 
the probabilities point to our being somewhere in the 
middle of an uncompleted evolution — then we could 
verify his claims. Successful predictions are the most 

1 We have also remarked above on Hegel's a priori vindication of 
monarchy. Philosophy is prostituted when it is thus turned into a 
partisan. To condemn institutions that are working well, or to acclaim 
them as eternally valid, is equally beyond the philosopher's province. 



252 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

satisfactory of all tests for a scientific hypothesis. But 
it is no doubt easiest to regard one's own standpoint as 
that of the Final Judge, and to treat all existence as 
converging upon this sacred moment. It may even be 
argued that such treatment is the only possible way of 
writing history in a serious spirit. For a writer like 
Hegel, that is probably true enough. To him the real 
is the ideal and the " rational." He is least likely of 
all great minds to grant that " a man's reach should 
exceed his grasp/' or to admit that " what I aspired to 
be, and was not, comforts me." He is wholly engrossed 
in showing the rationality of the actual, To condemn it, 
even from the point of view of that better future towards 
which it aims, would seem to him treasonable scepticism. 
In the philosophy of religion a Christian can have 
no objection to saying that the evolutionary process of 
the world's religions, whatever it was worth, has gone 
into the past. We should rather say, indeed, that an 
evolution (more or less) towards Christianity has 
yielded place to an evolution within and under the 
abiding conditions of Christian faith. But it is not 
easy to combine that assertion, and the corresponding 
recognition of an " absolute religion," with the universal 
applicability and competency of the evolution-of-reason 
formula as covering the facts of religion. 

NOTE. 

There would be nothing gained by reproducing any of the 
contents of the History of Philosophy. Except in the introduction, 
the significant triplicity of Hegel's work is mainly lacking ; and 
we have chiefly lists of names, partially classified, under the three 
great divisions — Greek Philosophy, Philosophy of the Middle 
Ages, Modern Philosophy. The contents, therefore, afford no help 
to following out Hegel's gigantic assumptions in that region. 



\ 



HEGELIANISM AND HISTORY 253 

As mentioned, the Philosophy of History divides in four : the 
Oriental World, the Grecian World, the Roman World, the 
Germanic World. 

Contents of Philosophy of Religion are given briefly on pp. 
254, 255. Comparing the three schemes, we should arrange as 
follows : — 

History. Religion. Philosophy. 

Magic (as the first low 
beginning). 
The Oriental World. A. Pantheism. (Tentative Philosophies.) 

(Transitional forms. ) 
The Greek World. B. Religion of Spiritual A. Greek Philosophy. 
The Roman World. Individuality. 

(Despair, as transi- 
tion.) 
The Germanic World. C. Absolute Religion. B. Mediaeval Philosophy. 

C. Modern Philosophy. 



CHAPTER XV 

Hegelianism and Christianity 

Literature. — A. Lectures on tine, Philosophy of Religion. 1 

B. Portion of the Phenomenology dealing with Religion. 

C. Dr. J. Caird's Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion; or 
Sterrett's ; Dr. E. Caird's Evolution of Religion ; Dr. Fairbairn's 
HegeVs Philosophy of Religion — summary and comment — in the 
Chicago Series ; Mr. M'Taggart's Essay in Hegelian Cosmology ; etc. 

The first part of all in the Philosophy of Religion is 
an abstract analysis of the " Conception of Religion." 
While of course this refers to religion in general, it 
seems fair to connect it in a peculiar sense with 
" Absolute Religion," which comes after rather than 
in the sequence of the world's faiths (" Definite 
Religion"). The regular exposition of each of the 
great religious systems begins with discussing its " con- 
ception." We may take it then that the Conception 

1 Abridged contents of the Philosophy of Religion — 
Introduction; A. (I., II., III.), B. 0. (''Division of the Subject "). 
Part I. The Conception of Religion, A. God, B. Religion, C. Worship. 
Part II. Definite Religion. 

First Division. The Religion of Nature. 
I. Immediate Religion. 
(a) Magic. 
(6) (Details), 
(c) Cultus. 



HEGELIANISM AND CHRISTIANITY 255 

of Religion is most fully carried out in its highest 
type — in Absolute Religion ; and absolute religion is — 
at least in some sense — Christianity. Or the " concep- 
tion " gives the first rough sketch ; " definite " religion 
tills in details from history ; and " absolute " religion 
gathers up the final synthesis. Hegel's analysis of the 
conception of religion begins with the objective thought 
of God. The truth which he finds contained in Pan- 
theism — the assertion of a unity below all differences, 
of an absolute principle to which every phenomenon 
is relative — is, he holds, the primary truth in religion. 
But (B) this is only a half-truth. The subjective spirit 
of man has its rights [or, as Hegel puts this, with one 
of his questionable translations, God Himself is know- 
ing Spirit]. In modern times especially, it would be 
useless to try to ignore the rights of subjectivity. 
Hence the modern speaks of religion rather than of 
God; he prefers to discuss the necessity of religion 
rather than investigate the proofs which are offered in 
support of the Being of God. But Hegel's way of 
showing the necessity of religion is to re-state the old 
argument for idealism, with the old difficulties and 

II. The Division of Consciousness within itself. 

1. [Chinese Religion] ; the Religion of Measure. 

(a) Its conception. 

(b) Its historical existence. 

(c) Cultus. 

2. [Brahmanism] ; the Religion of Imagination ; 

(a), (b), (c), nearly as in the last. 

3. [Buddhism] ; the Religion of Being- within - 

itself; (a), (b), (c). 

III. [Transitional Forms — Persia, Syria, Egypt.] 
Second Division ; the Religion of Spiritual Individuality 

[Judaism, Greece, Rome]. 
Part III. Absolute Religion. 



256 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

the old ambiguities. If all things imply the great 
unity, it is also true that all things imply thought. 
(G) Religion (man in the presence of God) implies a 
sort of double consciousness ; worship is the return to 
unity ; worship or cultus represents the consciousness 
of oneness with the Divine under the limits of religious 
experience and in the forms which are possible for 
religion as contrasted with speculative thought. In 
point of fact, Religion to Hegel is the plain man's 
organon for the all-importance of thought or for the 
sense of unity. The complementary truth — the import- 
ance of difference : the necessity of things to thought 
— is found developed in the State; religion or the 
Church cannot grasp it. Therefore the State stands 
highest ; it is the supreme, the absolute realisation of 
reason. For of course the State does not stand for 
nature in contrast with spirit — for difference in abstract 
separation from unity. The State is nature become 
spiritual; unity in difference. Religion, on the con- 
trary, is only a witness for one aspect of truth — for 
unity, for the claims of thought. 

These positions are not without importance for the 
subject to which we now turn. Having glanced briefly 
in the previous chapter at Hegel's treatment of the 
historical sequence of religions, we are henceforth to con- 
fine ourselves to that one religion which Hegel is good 
enough to term " absolute religion." Such an expression 
warrants us in giving it separate treatment. And we 
have further warrant for doing this in the fact that 
the Philosophy of Spirit introduces " revealed " religion 
— and it alone — into its system ; or, as we have already 
expressed it, dismisses the world's faiths as prehistoric 
rather than historic — embryonic and not even childish. 



HEGELIANISM AND CHRISTIANITY 257 

Of course in another sense we break decisively with 
Hegel when we draw such a line between Christianity 
and the " creeds outworn." It is part of the essence of 
his thinking that there can be no absolute division, in 
regard either to origin or quality, between the other 
faiths of mankind and that faith which dominates the 
modern world. This postulate of Hegel's is repugnant 
to ordinary Christian thinking. It will be found 
stated in the most persuasive and attractive form in 
Dr. John Caird's Introduction to the Philosophy of 
Religion. Principal Caird shows plainly that, if we 
are intelligent in our acceptance of the conception of 
evolution, we need not fear that novelty will be denied 
to the higher stages when compared with the lower. 
On the contrary, it is the very essence of an evolution 
that it involves fresh progress and new advance. 
Accordingly, on Hegelian premises, Christianity must 
be conceived not simply as recapitulating but as tran- 
scending in worth the earlier faiths of the world. So 
far as this point is concerned, the way may be clear 
enough for a friendly alliance between Christian faith 
and idealist philosophy. But there are other very grave 
difficulties. Christianity regards the world's religious 
history as being not a normal evolution, but distorted 
to an indefinite degree by sin. Christians believe they 
have evidence in revelation and experience that God 
has done more for them than merely perfect the 
world's defective evolution — that God was in Christ 
more intimately and personally than He was present to 
other devout and humble minds. To Christians, some 
particular facts are vital. " If Christ is not risen, your 
faith is vain ; ye are yet in- your sins." To Hegel the 
idea of Christ is more significant than any questions 
17 



258 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

regarding the historical Jesus. 1 The Christian and the 
Hegelian positions are thus separated by a deep gulf ; 
it will not easily be crossed, or even concealed. 

An important contribution has been made to the 
study of the subject in Mr. M'Taggart's characteristic- 
ally clear and frank chapter on Hegelianism and 
Christianity. Much of our task may be accomplished 
by a brief reference to Mr. M'Taggart's summary, 
though in one or two points we must offer criticisms. 

Mr. M'Taggart begins with Hegel's opinions regard- 
ing the doctrine of the Trinity and the more ele- 
mentary doctrine of Divine Personality. His finding 
in regard to both is the same, namely, that in those 
" triads " 2 which Hegel regards as corresponding to the 
Christian doctrines in question, the third stage is 
necessarily higher and more real than the other two. 
Instead of co-ordinating the three Persons of the 
Trinity, we should necessarily, he thinks, if we accepted 
Hegel's guidance in construing Christianity, regard the 
Holy Spirit alone as personal. Instead of regarding 
God as eternally a personal Spirit, we must regard 
God as becoming personal only in the Kingdom of the 
Spirit (not in that of the Father or in that of the 
Son, i.e. after the earthly life of Jesus, and not before 
it or during it ; or again — Hegel has to pass from the 
forms of Sabellian Christianity to his own speculative 
analysis — in the Christian Community as the inner 
essence of history, and not in mere thought nor yet 
in mere nature). Interpreting this phrase, and still 
further defining the Hegelian position, Mr. M'Taggart 

1 Compare the significant quotation given by Mr. M'Taggart at p. 
219 (Philosophy of Religion, ii. 318 ; Tr. iii. 110). 

2 See note on p. 273. 



HEGELIANISM AND CHRISTIANITY 259 

convinces himself that to Hegel personality is the 
exclusive property of a plurality of brother spirits, 
bound together in mutual love. That Mr. M'Taggart 
should take such a view of Hegel's drift is character- 
istic. He translates Hegel's ambiguities, as usual, into 
a clear and self -consistent content ; but — also as usual 
— he seems to drop much that is important to Hegel. 
There are of course materials in Hegel for the view 
that the third stage alone is real; but Hegelianism 
simply will not hold together unless you allow the 
Master — logically or illogically — to maintain that gra- 
duated and successive stages are also concurrently com- 
plementary aspects; that the lower, which in a sense 
passes away, in another sense survives and survives 
independently; that "not substance but subject" may 
be transformed at pleasure into " not only substance 
but also subject," and even into "not only subject but 
also substance." It seems, therefore, scarcely fair to 
refuse the special application to the Trinity of a two- 
edged suggestiveness which Hegel applies to the whole 
universe. The most that can be said — so far — is that 
Hegel's Trinity gives the highest place to the Holy 
Spirit. This is certainly a piece of heterodoxy; pos- 
sibly an inversion of church teaching. 1 

Much the same must be said of Mr. M'Taggart's 
handling of the problem of God's personality in Hegel's 
system. Hegel preserves a tone of misty ambiguity; 
Mr. M'Taggart drives a straight line through the 
entanglement, asserting half of what Hegel suggests 
and denying half. The position of Idealism is excel- 
lently put in a Fragment on Immortality by T. H. 

1 So far as church orthodoxy permits any difference in rank, the 
priority is assigned to the "fountain of Godhead," the Father. 



260 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

Green. " The ' immortality of the soul/ as = the etern- 
ity of thought = the being of God, is the absolute first 
and the absolute whole. To deny the ' immortality of 
the soul ' in this sense is to maintain the destructibility 
of thought, and this is a contradiction in terms," etc. 1 
Green's pious if undogmatic mind asserted both Divine 
personality and human immortality, though he made 
his assertions tremulously and with a morbid shrinking 
from anything like precision. Mr. M'Taggart feels a 
difficulty, with which we cannot but sympathise, in 
letting an argument, which is naturally taken as 
proving one or other, prove both. He goes straight for 
immortality — and Atheism. We might have thought 
the equities of the case were sufficiently met by saying 
Pantheism ; but Mr. M'Taggart loves the clear expres- 
sion of clear thought; and there is force in his con- 
tention that one who denies a personal God while 
asserting an impersonal Absolute ought to be said to 
disbelieve in God. Whether men assert or deny Divine 
personality, it is well that they should be alive to its 
importance. We find it difficult to believe that Hegel 
was so negative as Mr. M'Taggart thinks him, or as 
Mr. M'Taggart is himself. If Hegel really shared 
that startling and sharp-cut creed, he has concealed it 
in a way that does him little credit. But it seems 
certain that Hegel was willing to represent God as per- 
sonal — or indeed as tri-personal ; though one may hold 
that his inner mind lacked interest in these positions, 
and doubted the possibility of vindicating them over- 
against Pantheism. Mr. M'Taggart definitely rejects 
all Theistic and Trinitarian representations. He asserts 
and denies unmistakably. There are no things ; there 

1 Works, vol, iii. p. 159. 



HEGELIANISM AND CHRISTIANITY 261 

is no personal God; there is a universe of spirits 
cohering to constitute an impersonal Absolute. We 
might describe Mr. M'Taggart as reviving Polytheism. 
The " Divine Syndicate," which Huxley was surprised 
to miss among modern forms of the religious idea, has 
found a champion at last. What Hegel, according to 
Heine, " taught the young men of Berlin," is now being 
taught to the young men of Cambridge. The human 
race, it would seem, are not the dependent creatures 
whom experience would picture us. We are immortal, 
indestructible beings ; we or beings of our class are 
the only real existences ; and we are doomed by the 
necessity of the nature of things to eternal life and 
eternal love (or rather to an endless series of discon- 
tinuous lives, which in some sense are, or under certain 
conditions will be, perfected in love). If such beings 
are not gods, what is a god ? They have life in them- 
selves ; unoriginated, imperishable, they are indeed im- 
mortal. Such a view of man's immortality is perhaps 
worse than unbelief. It is not only not religious, but 
profoundly irreligious, for it endows man with the 
highest gifts independently of God (did a supreme God 
exist) and in spite of fate. We might again describe Mr. 
M'Taggart's position as an unexpected development of 
speculative Trinitarianism. He agrees with the view 
that Godhead logically implies a plurality of personal 
lives ; but we are or are included among the persons of 
this Trinity or rather multiunity. Mr. M'Taggart's 
evidence is found in his interpretation of Hegel's 
Dialectic. In its light, he finds the origin or the 
decay of a personality a thing inconceivable — there- 
fore, personality had no origin and cannot pass away. 
One long thin line of probable reasonings — even Mr. 



262 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

M'Taggart will hardly claim absolute mathematical 
demonstrativeness for his corollaries to the Dialectic 
— is made to bear an extremely heavy weight. Every 
other consideration is contemptuously flung aside. 1 

A more decided reason for believing that Hegel 
occupied a position altogether aloof from the Church 
doctrine of the Trinity, is found in some indiscreet 
passages in the Phenomenology. "The pictorial or 
popular thought 2 of the Christian Church is not strict 
conceptual thinking ; it has the same contents, but does 
not represent them in their necessity ; instead of neces- 
sary logical connexion, it introduces into the region of 
pure thought the natural relationships of Father and 
Son." Hence, for lack of a priori necessary connexion, 
the beliefs of the Christian Church rank as "revealed 
externally by Another ; thought does not recognise in 
these beliefs its own image, the very nature of self- 
consciousness." ..." The mere spirit of eternity, the 
abstract Deity, becomes an other along with itself, or 
passes into existence; 3 it passes 4 immediately into 
immediate existence." In the language of the Christian 
Church, " God creates a world. Creation is a word used 
by popular and pictorical thought for the absolute 
process of the notion itself." . . . Next, upon nature 
there follows Spirit or the mind of man ; and " because 
thought here arises out of immediacy — because the 
thought which arises is a conditioned type of thought 
which recognises an other standing over-against it, we 
have the self -antagonised thought of Good and Evil" 5 
and the story of a Fall out of " the idle animal inno- 

1 Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, p. 70. See also below. 

2 Das Vorstellen. s Daseyn. 4 I.e., it is conceived as jjassing. 
5 ? — Der Gedanke, der das Andersscyn anihm hat. 



HEGELIANISM AND CHRISTIANITY 263 

cence " of Paradise. . . . The origin of evil " might 
indeed be carried farther backwards, before creation, 
or the existence of reality, into the first kingdom of 
thought. It may be said that the firstborn son of 
light fell, and that another was forthwith begotten in 
his place. But such expressions as ' Fall ' and ' Son ' are 
merely pictorial and imaginative," and create confusion 
when they are mixed with philosophical truths. " No 
more gain would accrue if the thought of the Eternal 
Reality's giving rise to the principle of otherness were 
expanded into a multiplicity of others [angelic spirits] 
to whom the return to unity might then be assigned. 
This would indeed have one advantage. If instead of 
another, we said others, we should have given clearer 
expression to the principle of Difference. Nay more; 
we might have expressed it, not as a random multi- 
plicity, but as the origin of definite differences : one 
part, the Son, standing for God's knowledge of His own 
reality ; the other part, the expression of God's being-f or- 
Himself — angels, who only live to praise the Supreme 
Divine Reality. Still further, we might assign to these 
angel throngs the return to unity from the separation 
of independent being, and the rise of the principle of 
self in the form of wickedness. 1 By subdividing other - 
beingness into two parts, we should have had a fuller 
view of the elements 2 of mind. 3 If we counted these 
elements, we might speak of a Four-in-oneness 4 [not 
Trinity] ; or, reckoning the two groups of faithful and 
fallen angels, a Five-in-oneness. 5 But to count the 

1 ? — Das InsichgcJien des JBosen. 2 Momenten. 3 Geist. 

4 Viereinigkeit. 

5 Funfeinigkeit. One is reminded of Walt Whitman's "Square 
Deific," where "Jehovah" and "Saviour" are followed by "Satan," 



264 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

elements is useless ; partly because, after all, the idea of 
otherness or difference is one great thought . . . partly 
because, if we begin to subdivide, we must go a great 
deal further than three or four . . . and should do best 
to say, vaguely, numbers." . . . Other efforts of the 
picture-thought of religion to express the importance 
of difference and evil to the Divine principle of unity 
itself, are found in the doctrine of the " Humiliation " or 
Kenosis, when "the Divine being renounces His abstract- 
ness and unreality." ..." Evil, however, is kept by 
picture-thought far from God, or, at most, by a great 
— and useless because unphilosophical — expenditure of 
intellectual energy, is conceived in God as His wrath." * 

These quotations appear decisive as to Hegel's real 
mind ; 2 it will be strange if they are not also authorita- 
tive as to the real bearing of his philosophy. He is 
interested in maintaining a logical plurality in the 
logical unity ; and he prefers " mysterious " doctrines, 
with their hint of an esoteric philosophical reading, to 
those shallower rational views of religion in which 
common-sense finds itself at home. But plainly, to 
Hegel, Christian beliefs were only symbols, and symbols 
not too sacred to be made the occasion of unseemly 
jests. It is a bold enterprise to try to reclaim such a 
philosophical creed, and consecrate it to the service of 
orthodoxy. 

The next doctrine discussed by Mr. M ( Taggart is the 
Incarnation. He points out very clearly that with 

and only fourthly by " Spirita Santa "[sic]. "What else is this than 
nature pantheism, wherever it may be found ? 

1 Phenomenology, pp. 557-562. 

2 Dr. Harris knows the Phenomenology well ; was it fair to suppress 
the evidence it furnishes as to Hegel's religious creed ? Whether Dr. 
Sterrett knows it I am not aware. 






HEGELIANISM AND CHRISTIANITY 265 

Hegel necessarily the primary sense of the Incarnation 
is an assertion that the Absolute is embodied in the 
whole Finite process as such. He also quotes from the 
Philosophy of Religion what is perhaps the most care- 
ful attempt Hegel makes to get in touch with ortho- 
doxy — a passage so important that it must be reproduced 
here also. " If Man is to get a consciousness of the unity 
of Divine and human nature, and of this characteristic 
of Man as belonging to Man in general ; or if this 
knowledge is to force its way wholly into the conscious- 
ness of his finitude as the beam of eternal light which 
reveals itself to him in the finite, then it must reach 
him in his character as Man in general, i.e. apart from 
any particular conditions of culture or training ; it must 
come to him as representing Man in his immediate 
state, and it must be universal for immediate conscious- 
ness. 

" The consciousness of the absolute Idea, which we 
have in thought, must therefore not be put forward as 
belonging to the standpoint of philosophical speculation, 
of speculative thought, but must, on the contrary, 
appear in the form of certainty for man in general. 
This does not mean that they think this consciousness, 
or perceive and recognise the necessity of this Idea; 
but what we are concerned to show is rather that the 
idea becomes for them certain, 1 i.e. this idea, namely, 
the unity of Divine and human nature, attains the stage 
of certainty, that, so far as they are concerned, 2 it 

1 I.e., apart from its real philosophical grounds — as an "immediate " 
conviction. 

2 Fur sie. The translator's rendering is almost a gloss ; it gives 
much more definite emphasis to Hegel's repudiation of Christianity as 
fact. Yet probably the gloss is sound enough. 



266 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

receives the form of immediate sense-perception, of out- 
ward existence — in short, that this Idea appears as 
seen and experienced in the world. This unity must 
accordingly show itself to consciousness in a purely 
temporal, absolutely ordinary manifestation of real- 
ity, in one particular man, in a definite individual 
who is at the same time known to be the Divine 
Idea, not merely a Being of a higher kind in general, 
but rather the highest, the Absolute Idea, the Son of 
God." 1 

Here we have a very different tone from the bois- 
terousness of the Phenomenology, and a much more 
serious effort to get into touch with Christian belief. It 
is true, taken at its highest estimate, it has strange 
features for a Christian reader. It is, or for the defence 
of orthodoxy it should be, an account of the reason 
why Christ the Son of God must come into the world 
by a genuine historical incarnation. And the reason 
offered is, that nothing else will give the unphilo- 
sophical many a grasp — in their unphilosophical fashion 
— of the central truth of religion, the unity of God and 
man. If the translators of the Philosophy of Religion 
are right, Hegel has given a hint, even in this passage, 
that we are dealing not with fact or its necessity, but 
with the necessity of a belief — " so far as " the common 
people "are concerned." Even if he did not — and 
assuredly his comfortable position as WeltphilosopJt 
depended on such hints not being generally understood 
— yet his disciples were sure to take the step to beliefs 
from facts. Can it be seriously maintained that nothing 
but the actual historical incarnation of the Son of God 

1 Phil, of Religion, ii. 282, 283 ; Tr. iii. 72, 73 ; Cosmology, 
219, 220. 



HEGELIANISM AND CHRISTIANITY 267 

could start the persuasion of man's oneness with God 
in the unphilosophical world ? If Christianity is only 
the popularising of a metaphysical creed, would not 
belief that an Incarnation had taken place serve all the 
necessities of the case ? Is not the Idea always more 
important, to Hegel's Idealism, than the fact ? Has 
not the fact soiling dust of contingency upon it ? If 
Hegel was really so simple-minded or so preoccupied as 
not to draw the distinction in question, he may have been 
personally an orthodox Christian on this point. When 
we think of the Phenomenology , never cancelled or 
disowned — when we think what Hegel was — the possi- 
bility seems shadowy. He finds significance in Christ 
(or the Christ-idea) purely for the average man. The 
man of speculative insight does not need Christianity, 
Philosophy does him the same service in a better way. 
And thus religion seems to rank lower, with Hegel, than 
its partners in the Philosophy of Mind. It stands too 
dangerously near philosophy. Art is art, and has its 
great historic forms. No modern reformer will propose, 
like Plato, that we should suppress art in the interests 
of abstract truth. Morals are morals ; they also have 
a function absolute within their own sphere, though in 
their case again we feel that the sceptical side of ideal- 
ism presses unfairly upon them. Yet the moral insti- 
tution is sure of Hegel's respect ; and the importance 
of the practical side of life is undeniable. But what is 
religion — except an inferior type of philosophy ? Its 
institution (the Church) is said by Hegel — perhaps 
truly enough ; the visible Church is a witness to the 
inner spiritual life ; never its full embodiment — to stand 
lower than the State. If for the spiritual life we 
allow Hegel to substitute an ideal scheme of philosophy 



268 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

stated for vulgar minds, we need not wonder if his 
patronage of religion and of Christianity has a flavour 
of contempt about it. 

Mr. M'Taggart does not dwell upon Hegel's aversion 
to the Christian doctrine of Atonement. Probably he 
does not think such conceptions worthy of a philo- 
sopher's attention. So Hegel himself might have 
judged. He respected the orthodox Christology, but 
scarcely any other doctrine. He sees in the Atonement 
only a repetition of the one great rhythm of thought — 
the oneness of God and man ; the unbroken essential 
unity of all things, not merely in spite of differences but 
through them. Once again the Phenomenology states 
Hegel's views with brusquer frankness than we find in 
later writings. God is conceived as "self-estranged." 
Reconciliation must proceed — or be conceived as pro- 
ceeding — from the side of God ; because God, in contrast 
with the world, is a sort of potentiality [and therefore in 
deeper need of reconciliation ?]. By the death of Christ 
" the Absolute Being is reconciled with Him [it ?] self " ; 
and this death "is" Christ's "resurrection as Spirit." 
When God "assumes human nature, we have it expressly 
admitted that Divine and human nature are insepar- 
ably in potential union — just as in the doctrines of 
Creation and Fall we have it implied — not expressed 
of course — that potentially wickedness and reality are 
akin to God ; the absolute Being would only have the 
name of absoluteness, if anything could come into 
existence that was really strange to Him." Accord- 
ingly Christian belief gives in the form of "picture- 
thought " the truth of " the reconciliation of the Divine 
Being with the principle of otherness (or, difference), 
and in particular with its [most distinctive] thought- 



HEGELIANISM AND CHRISTIANITY 269 

conception — wickedness." 1 It may be said that " good 
and evil are speculatively identical," though we ought 
to add that they are also by definition opposites. [But 
opposites are identical, and identity divides into 
opposites ; for] " the mistake is, to take same and not 
same, identity and non-identity, for something true, 
firm, actual, and so to lean upon them. Neither one 
nor other is true, but simply their process — that simple 
self -sameness is an abstraction and therefore is the 
absolute difference ; that difference differs from itself 
and therefore is self-identical. So of the identity of 
the Divine Being with Nature, and in particular with 
man." It is correct, yet incorrect. " We hold fast to 
is, and forget thought, whose elements are but also 
are not ; or are only the movement, which is [or con- 
stitutes] mind." 2 . . . Christ " the dead Divine man or 
human God is potentially the universal self -conscious- 
ness ; He must become that [actually] for this self- 
consciousness " [i.e. in the consciousness of all men] . . . 
Consciousness of evil is " knowledge of something which 
can exist; hence to be conscious of evil is to become 
evil ; or rather it is the becoming of the thought of 
evil, and therefore the first step in reconciliation." 
[Thought is the reconciling principle; with the conscious- 
ness of sin, thought is at work.] . . . Christ " loses His 
natural meaning in His spiritual self -consciousness ; 
He becomes " by death " what He was destined to be ; 
death ceases to mean the non-existence of this indi- 



1 The theology of the Vorstellvmg certainly could never rise so high as 
this — 

' ' Peace on earth and mercy mild ; 
God and sin are reconciled ! " 

2 Der Gcist. 



270 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

victual, and is transformed into the glorious universality 
of that Spirit who lives in His Church, daily dying 
and rising again." ..." The self-incurred death of the 
Mediator is the destruction of His objective or par- 
ticular existence; it has become a universal self- 
consciousness." Finally, Hegel repudiates a "trans- 
action " of the nature of a " foreign satisfaction," or 
lets it pass as the lispings of picture-thought. 1 Without 
attempting here to discuss how far " transactional " 
views of the Atonement are legitimate, we may point 
out that Hegelianism is pledged to deny any real 
act or process of reconciliation. In other words, 
Hegelianism is pledged to leave out of Christianity 
what is most distinctive in it. 

If in this passage the logical analysis of reality pre- 
dominates, Hegelianism is no more satisfactory when 
it tries to construe the Christian faith on moral lines. 
For in that case it calls upon us to rise out of morals 
into a higher region. Forgiveness points to the dis- 
covery that imputation of guilt or merit is inadequate 
to the deeper truth of things. Every one is responsible 
— that is the affirmation of morality, and it is true 
within limits. No one is responsible — to discover 
this alleged philosophical truth is to enter upon the 
franchises of religion ; these are the glorious liberties 
of the children of God. Christians will prefer to 
adhere to the despised " synthetic " assertion of the real 
forgiveness of real ill-desert by God and men; they 
believe that forgiveness is a totally different thing 
from discovering that there is nothing to forgive. 
Such an attitude as the Hegelian not merely destroys 
Christian faith but robs Theism of its meaning. Faith 
1 Phenomenology, pp. 563-571. 



HEGELIANISM AND CHRISTIANITY 271 

in God is precious because of the hope of moral fellow- 
ship with God. If God were a personal Spirit, but one 
to whom morality had no meaning, we could not have 
communion with Him; He would be nothing to us. 
Hence, whether Hegel was Pantheist or Theist is a 
question of little interest, Moral and Christian Theism 
w T ere, in any case, impossible to the champion of such 
a creed. 

The last part of Mr. M'Taggart's comparison refers 
to the doctrines of sin and grace, and to Christian 
ethics. He points out that there is a certain analogy 
to Christianity, and a distinct contrast to the older 
rationalism, in Hegel's view of the profound pervasive- 
ness of sin ; but he also frankly points out the non- 
Christian element in the pantheistical equating of 
right and wrong. In the doctrine of grace, he again 
maintains, Hegel stands nearer to Christianity than 
rationalism, yet no nearer to Christianity than to other 
mystical creeds. The claim may be granted and the 
criticism admitted. Hegel rather loves to assert 
positions which, to the unphilosophical, seem utter 
mystery ; and grace may be styled the mystery of a 
Divine power flooding over the landmarks which 
separate personality from personality. But the philo- 
sophical background of this doctrine in Hegel's case 
is the assertion of an eternal and unbroken unity in 
orderly evolution throughout all history. 

Mr. M'Taggart further inquires why Hegel chose to 
identify the absolute religion of his theory with the 
very different image presented by Christian belief. He 
answers that Christianity was the nearest thing to 
Idealism in all the religions of the past — nearer too 
than any new growth which the future was likely to 



272 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

offer. Perhaps he should have more plainly admitted 
that Hegel the historian was pledged to such an 
identification. "The real is the rational." The lead- 
ing Germanic nations having become Christian, 
philosophy is bound to show that they had to become 
Christian. The Hegelian way of construing history 
compels the philosopher to identify the highest stage 
yet reached with the highest of all — i.e. (as he con- 
ceives them) Christianity with Hegelianism. The task 
is done, at the cost of whatever transformations. We 
think Mr. M'Taggart unduly imputes to Hegel the 
very sharply defined conclusions which his disciple 
and critic has reached. When it came to speaking of 
results, Hegel loved half lights. Nor must we charge 
Hegel with deliberately falsifying the content of 
Christianity. He approached it in all honesty, with 
the assumption that, like everything else, it was a 
mode of conceiving the relations of subject and object, 
individual and universal. That assumption, no less 
than the circumstances of his time, made Hegel's results 
inevitable. He treats the intellectualist scheme as 
the kernel of Christianity; everything else must be 
husk. 

We do not even deny that a distinction between 
kernel and husk may be necessary. The millenarian 
beliefs of the first Christians, for example, were natural 
and beautiful ; the same beliefs, when forced into life 
to-day, are neither beautiful nor natural. Nor can we 
deny that the educated and the half-educated will 
differ, not merely in beliefs, but in the importance they 
attach to their differences. Persons of defective culture 
have difficulty in recognising the same ideas if the 
language in which they are couched has been changed. 



HEGELIANISM AND CHRISTIANITY 273 

They cling to the familiar language as if it were a 
lifebuoy, and their only hope of escape from the dark 
waters. But when all admissions are made, Christianity 
must hold that the uneducated Christian, if he has real 
Christian experience, possesses competence in this region, 
— that the non-Christian, however educated, is incom- 
petent. We must make sure which is the kernel and 
which is the husk. To Hegel, philosophy is kernel and 
history — is it not husk ? To Hegel, says Mr. MTaggart, 
Christ could make little appeal, since he was " neither 
a philosopher nor a statesman." Is Christ not kernel 
of the kernel ? Does it not lie with the tendencies of 
Hegelianism as well as with the idiosyncrasies of Hegel, 
to treat Him — I write the words sorrowfully — as the 
mere time-shell of a timeless intellectual truth ? It 
may admit of argument whether or not the historical 
phenomenon of Christianity is " deduced " a priori 
by Hegel. But his intellectualism makes it im- 
possible for him to appreciate the spiritual greatness 
of God's gift. If he did " deduce " Christianity, he 
distorted it. And he has told us plainly that religion 
in his view can be no more than an imperfect version 
of philosophy. 

To Christians the incapacity of Hegel to do justice 
to Christ is a decisive argument against accepting his 
philosophy in full. To non-Christians of course the 
matter is of less significance, but even they may well 
ask themselves whether Hegel has not here set himself 
a great task in which he has failed. 



274 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 



NOTE. 

"Absolute Religion "—Hegel's Divisions (C). 

I. God in His eternal Idea in-and-for-self ; the Kingdom of the 
Father. 

1. Determination in the element of thought. 

2. Absolute Diremption. 

3. Trinity. 

II. The eternal Idea of God in the element of consciousness and 
ordinary thought, or difference ; the Kingdom of the Son. 
1. Positing of the difference ; 2. the world ; 3. the 
essential nature of man. 
III. The Idea in the element of the Church or Spiritual Com- 
munity ; the Kingdom of the Spirit. 

[1. Its conception; 2. its realisation; 3. the spiritual 
in universal reality.] 



CHAPTER XVI 

Final Statement and Estimate 

At this point it might seem necessary to the completion 
of our scheme of treatment, that we should state 
Hegel's views on the nature of Absolute Knowledge or 
Philosophy. But, in point of fact, that has been our 
subject throughout. And all we can now attempt is a 
hurried recapitulation, with a more exact definition of 
Hegel's position, and some brief criticism. 

Kant, among much other material, and amid results 
of more solid value, summed up his main discussion in 
the interests of scepticism, affirming that knowledge is 
constituted by (human) thought, and therefore is false, 
being vitiated by human subjectivity. Hegel begins 
by inverting this position. Knowledge is indeed well 
defined as what we necessarily think; but it is not 
on that account false; rather it is on that account 
certainly true. Or what other conclusion can we come 
to, whose faculties are not only the accused, but also the 
defenders and the prosecutors, and more important 
than all, the judges ? At the same time Hegel under- 
takes to prove by argument the necessity of the 
positions to which the human mind, subjectively and 
psychologically, feels itself shut up, and concurrently 
this process of argument constitutes Hegel's substitute 

275 



276 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

for Kant's critical process. Instead of Kant's attempt 
to criticise the faculty of knowledge from the outside, 
"before he will use it," Hegel aims at a philosophy 
which is, from one point of view, human knowledge 
criticising itself. Everything is a phase — and each 
several phenomenon is one phase only — in the evolution 
of the ideal of knowledge. Knowledge which grasps 
reality holds the key to all mysteries ; or, all modes of 
consciousness are varying fashions of conceiving the 
relation between subject and object, between thinker 
and thought. The beliefs of the mind combine in a 
single series. This series constitutes philosophy as an 
orderly whole, and is created by the dialectic move- 
ment, which first proves the necessity of each member 
in the series, and then reveals its limitations, — which 
thus presses the mind onward from category to 
category, and from one division of philosophy to 
another. Such a method is in its very nature at once 
criticism and verification, at once verification and 
criticism. If at the end we have the mysterious figure 
of an absolute knowledge, that is probably nothing else 
than the initial stage of the philosophical process — the 
Logic, with its shadowy yet authoritative construction 
of the nature of reality in the most general terms. 
The system of Hegel, like eternity, may be symbolised 
by a serpent whose tail is grasped in its mouth. 

" After Last returns the First, 
Though a wide compass round be fetched." 

How far the Phenomenology or the Histories are 
parts of this all-authoritative circle, we cannot again 
discuss. 

This splendid and ambitious programme contains 



FINAL STATEMENT AND ESTIMATE 277 

much that must be unreservedly praised. Its belief in 
knowledge, and its success in repelling Kant's scepti- 
cism, are altogether admirable. Its idea of a systematic 
unity is but the interpretation in ontological terms of 
what the conception of knowledge implies, though we 
may question whether Hegel does not apply his grand 
idea too boldly, or, perhaps rather, too monotonously. 
Further, Hegel opens a door of escape from the ordinary 
and fruitless alternation of dogmatism with scepticism, 
when he proposes to test and graduate knowledge 
within the area of knowledge itself, by the exercise of 
one of the highest and most arduous processes of 
knowledge ; though here again one might prefer a 
modification ; one might wish that Hegel had referred 
us to knowledge or experience. Finally — though more 
might easily be said — the idea of transformation in 
evolution, if by no means Hegel's peculiar property, 
has in him one of its latest and probably the pro- 
foundest of all its interpreters. He applies evolution 
— that is, he applies the idea of transformation — to 
knowledge. We start from provisional assertions. 
Our advance is not so much — as with intuitionalist 
common sense — the mechanical work of building on 
unalterable foundations, but rather the living process 
by which a mere germ of knowledge becomes trans- 
formed into a fully articulated organism. 

On the other hand, these great merits and profound 
insights are associated with correspondingly grave 
faults. First and foremost, we cannot accept the 
dialectic method as adequate to the work which Hegel 
imposes upon it. To the last it remains obscure, 
slippery, unintelligible; or, so far as it is clearly 
defined, it is an incredible paradox. But if this 



278 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

criticism is just, the systematic coherence of Hegel's 
work, to which he rightly attached so great an import- 
ance, is forfeited ; he has sketched grandiose outlines, 
he has uttered suggestive aspirations, but has not 
produced that close-knit proof which he thought was 
his. In the second place, the ambiguities of Hegel's 
system cannot be permanently glossed over. What 
did it all mean ? Is the highest stage exclusively true ? 
Is each stage true in its place ? Are both positions 
affirmed by Hegel ? Or is truth nowhere to be found ? 
Or, finally, do we escape from haunting ambiguities by 
the doctrine of degrees of reality ? 

The first position is found in Dr. Harris. 1 The 
categories are not true " each in its own place." Only 
the highest is true. Hegel's Logic is therefore under- 
stood as a demonstration of the real existence of the 
highest thinking being — God ; while it is held that the 
significance of the demonstration is confined to the 
limited intelligence of man. It is our finite mind 
which is attracted by the lower forms of thought, but 
which is gradually disillusioned of them all, till it 
recognises truth at last in the thought of a spiritual 
God. Analogous positions, amid grave differences, 
recur in Mr. M'Taggart. Although, according to him, 
all stages of the Logic define reality, yet the third and 
highest stage yields the insight that only spirits exist ; 
and the way in which Logic moves forward by a 
dialectic process testifies to the imperfection of human 
thought. There is indeed for Mr. M'Taggart a 
systematic unity in all things ; but the evidence for it 
is found by him not at all in the combination of Hegel's 
successive stages — only in the nature of Hegel's highest 
1 EegeVs Logic, see pp. 140, 183, 284, 285. 



FINAL STATEMENT AND ESTIMATE 279 

stage ; and this spiritual and absolute unity is not one 
Spirit, but the impersonal unity in which personal 
spirits harmonise or commune with each other. These 
strongly contrasted views are alike in this, that, up to 
a certain point, they fasten attention upon the same 
strands of Hegelian thought, while ignoring, pre- 
cluding, or denying other elements in Hegel's system. 
As against Dr. Harris, Hegel certainly does mean 
categories to be "valid each in its sphere," for they 
are the objective unfolding of absolute thought or 
truth. 1 And, as against Mr. M'Taggart, Hegel does 
hold to the reality — however qualified and depotentiated 
— of the finite and material. 

The view that all stages are true, appears rather 
singularly as the practical outcome of Professor Pringle- 
Pattison's praise of Hegel for grading categories. Or, 
again, in combination with the view that the Logic 
demonstrates the being of a personal God, this position 
is part of the contendings of the orthodox Hegelianism 
of the Right. Taken by itself, it amounts to a trans- 
formation of Hegel. To say this is not to condemn 
Professor Pringle-Pattison. He has not offered this 
view to us as the whole of Hegel, but as the whole of 
what he deems valuable in a philosophy which seems 
to him mixed between truth and error. It is well, 
however, to remind ourselves how much is left out 
when we interpret Hegel on these lines. Hegel tries to 
affirm both that all are true in their places, and that 
none is true save the highest. " The fearful power of 
the negative " disappears if we drop out the last part 
of the assertion. And that is the power which con- 

1 Dr. Harris admits that tliey apply to the "processes" of nature 
but only there, and even there imperfectly. 



280 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

stitutes— -if perhaps it also undermines — Hegel's entire 
system. 

In saying this we have already affirmed that we 
regard the third of the positions named above as Hegel's 
genuine doctrine ; and we have also indicated in brief 
terms why we cannot accept it. Hegel packs his 
formula so full that it becomes unstable, bursts, and 
spills its contents in every direction. In other words, 
we venture to think that Hegel's ambiguity is no 
accidental or superficial defect in statement, but part 
of the essence of his thought. He builds upon paradox, 
and seeks to combine incompatible or unreconciled 
positions. He says not merely " both high and low are 
true," but first " all are true," and then " only the 
highest is true." It is possible that some speculative 
reconciliation might be found for such an opposition ; 
or it is possible that, to a higher type of conscious- 
ness, the opposition might vanish. We cannot accept 
the mere " dialectical " statement of a paradox as a 
solution. 

When Hegel's construction of the highest is aban- 
doned — when his dialectical or speculative process loses 
part of its potency, and fails to attain the goal of 
absolute knowledge — when the "ladder" is fixed 
nowhere — then the "negative" moment has the last 
word on every subject, and Hegel's omniscience turns 
sceptical. The system is in pieces. The string is broken, 
and the jewels are poured out in a confused heap. This 
development — a different aberration from the material- 
istic " Hegelianism of the Left " — is to be witnessed 
to-day in the later writings of Mr. Bradley and in Mr. 
Taylor's Problem of Conduct. Even in Hegel himself 
there are suggestions of scepticism. What is he but 



FINAL STATEMENT AND ESTIMATE 281 

sceptical when he lays down the doctrine that no stage 
is true, but only the advance from stage to stage ? Or 
what else can we say of the " Not Being but Becoming " 
paradox ? 

Yet another attempt to place a definite ontological 
meaning upon Hegel's views is suggested by the 
doctrine of degrees of reality worked out — though 
largely neutralised by the author's scepticism — in Mr. 
Bradley's Appearance and Reality. We do not think 
that this was Hegel's own teaching, except in so far as 
his method of gradation forces him to hold spiritual 
existence more real than material existence, while yet 
both, as vital elements in knowledge, are for him real. 
Beyond that point, Hegel has rather evaded than 
solved the problem of reality. Gradation is of the 
very essence of his Logic ; but what ontological mean- 
ing can be attributed to a discussion which treats 
" being '' as simply one category of thought among 
many, and the very poorest of them all ? Hegel 
thinks that the public are too anxious for results. 
They ought to have their attention gently but firmly 
called to processes, since in philosophy a result is 
nothing at all apart from the process which justifies 
and explains it. And this is wholesome teaching ; still, 
we must have results sooner or later, if philosophy is 
not to be a mere toy. We do not seem to get such 
results from Hegel. When we ask for an enumeration 
of realities, Hegel tends to offer us a description of the 
inner structure of the real. We ask, " What things are 
real ? " Or we grow desperate, and ask, " Is anything 
real at all ? " Hegel steadily answers, " Reality will be 
found to have such predicates as this ; to wit, it is 
rational ; it is ideal, etc." So far as he has a definite 



282 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

position, he is definitely ambiguous or self -contradictory, 
forcibly combining alternative possibilities in one 
statement. Mr. Bradley's proposal is scarcely Hegelian. 
It does not expose Mr. Bradley to the label he dislikes. 
His originality is secure. The proposal may, however, 
be described as an attempt to draw a definite conclusion 
from premises which he largely holds in common with 
Hegel. There is much in Hegel that points in this 
direction. The drawback to this "way out" is the 
obscurity, not to say unintelligibleness, of the thought 
of partial and graduated reality. If justified at all, 
the conception is likely to be justified by some other 
processes than those of epistemology or abstract 
ontology. If Lotze's hypothesis of universal sentiency 
were adopted, we might speak of degrees in reality. 
But the language would be figurative ; and the doctrine 
is only a hypothesis. 

Our second criticism on Hegel — the charge of 
persistent and inherent ambiguity — might be repeated 
in different language. (1) Is the the Infinite (alone) 
real ? [No ; = the older Pantheism.] (2) Is the Finite 
alone real ? [ = Hegelianism of the Left ; with affinities 
in Mr. M'Taggart's affirmation of many spirits and 
denial of a supreme God.] (3) Are both real ? [ = 
orthodox Hegelianism of the Eight.] (4) Neither — 
only the process ? [ = Scepticism.] (5) Real in varying 
degrees ? — Hegel's teaching wavers or alternates 
between these rival constructions. He holds that we 
can take up our position at the standpoint of the 
Infinite (which is thought), and construe the finite as 
its necessary unfolding — inadequate therefore and 
unreal in detail, sub specie temporis, but necessarily 
adequate and real in the totality of its phases, sub 



FINAL STATEMENT AND ESTIMATE 283 

specie eternitatis. Such a view of things might be 
conceived as possibly true and valid for the Divine 
mind, but must be characterised as certainly not valid 
for man. 

Or, once again, we might describe the ambiguities of 
Hegel's position by raising the question, In what sense 
he inculcates idealism. Does he mean — (1) All is 
rational ? With that he admittedly begins ; and if he 
has not proved that — for he has used the conjuring 
tricks of the dialectic method — yet he has done us the 
great service of showing how we may prove it. Or 
does he mean — (2) Nothing is real except thought ? 
He has allowed himself to use that phrase, and to profit 
by it ; yet he does not really mean it ; it represents a 
form of opinion which no serious thinker will seriously 
maintain. Or does he mean — (3) Nothing is real except 
thinkers ? Yes — and No. Not at all, so as to make 
nature simply a phantasmagoria in man's mind ; and 
yet " in the highest sense " 1 spirits alone are real. 

In our third criticism of Hegel we have once more 
in view his use of the formula, "all is thought," or 
" nothing but thought exists." The temptation to 
such a formula lies in the narrow intellectualist cast of 
his system ; and we hold such excessive intellectualism 
to be a great evil. From the sound position, knowledge 
is knowledge of reality, he proceeds — with, however, 
little serious meaning — to the unsound and extravagant 
position, to be real is nothing else than to be known, or, 
as Green has put it, esse is intelligi. And with all 

1 Plato's doctrine implies . . . " First ... all that is real is relative to 
mind" ; secondly, "reality in the highest sense only belongs to objects 
in so far as they are minds, self-conscious beings." — Newspaper report 
of Dr. E. Caird's Glasgow Gifford Lectures. 



284 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

seriousness Hegel holds that by analysing knowledge 
he gains the clue to every reality and every possibility. 
Now, whatever might be true for a higher consciousness, 
this cannot be true for us. Language protests against 
the absurdity of the assertion that a verb in the 
passive voice can furnish the absolute definition of the 
real. If intelligi is esse, why not intelligere? Why 
not velle ? Why not even sentire ? Yet this particular 
paradox is found not only in Hegel but in the British 
Hegelians, of wdioin we must now briefly speak. 

The return from Hegel to Kant — though of course 
to a Kant read in the light of Hegel and interpreted 
constructively — the return to Kant, wdiich we observe 
in Green, Dr. Edward Caird, and others, implies a 
partially hinted or an unexpressed distrust of the 
dialectic method, and a search for surer foundations. 
The first result is to bring thought back to what we 
noted above as the elementary lesson which Hegel was 
able to draw out of Kant. Knowledge is the necessary 
working of human thought ; it is therefore not false, 
as Kant held, but true. On this basis, the element of 
criticism of our knowledge, connected by Hegel with 
his dialectic method, disappears ; or, so far as it is 
introduced into British Hegelianism, it constitutes- a 
fresh and independent borrowing from Hegel's stores. 
The gist of the British Hegelian position is best seen 
in T. H. Green. There is an analysis of knowledge 
and there is an analysis of conduct. The results of 
both are equally true, for they are indeed the opposite 
sides of one shield. In knowledge, we learn self ; in 
conduct, we realise self. But — says Green — in know- 
ledge we also learn from God, and in conduct serve 
Him. Moreover, as this to Green is truth, so also it 



FINAL STATEMENT AND ESTIMATE 285 

is the whole actual or possible truth of religious 
experience. 1 

The difficulty in such a position, as many of its 
critics have pointed out, is that it seems to imply the 
impossible doctrines of solipsism. It erects its whole 
ontology upon an analysis of knowledge — including in 
knowledge the knowledge - implications of conduct. 
In our triumph, as we drummed out from the field 
of philosophy that absurd and unknowable ghost of 
known reality the Kantian thing-in-itself, we have 
neglected to take guarantees for reality in any shape 
or form. By a masterful exercise of force, Green 
indeed draws into his philosophy a God, and men, and 
a relation between them ; but properly philosophy, as 
he works it out, is merely the abstract image of 
consciousness or self-consciousness, with scanty onto- 
logical implications. Even if we may speak of the 
creative power of thought, the analogy between God's 
creating and man's knowing is too faint to form the 
backbone of a philosophy, — and what justification has 
Green for the contrast between God and man ? And 
yet such a contrast is necessary, and Green draws it. 

1 Mr. M'Taggart's interesting criticisms {Hegelian Cosmology, Essays 
v. and vii. ) on the idea of society as an organism, etc. , may be admitted 
to this extent, that actual political society is not the only or the 
final fulfilment of the moral ideal — a very important correction of the 
spirit of Hegel's teaching. The supernatural, the immortal, is indeed 
required by the ideal. The "real" is not the "rational" in any sense 
which would make the British or the German Empire = the Kingdom of 
God. Yet we may decline to admit Mr. M'Taggart's inference, that 
actual political society is in no sense organic and in no degree a 
fulfilment of the moral ideal. Although abstract justice can never be 
the sole determinant of state penalties, yet punishment must be just, 
and publicly acclaimed as just, or it will become an intolerable burden 
and a source of corruption. 



286 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

When we turn from God to things, we find that the 
finite reality is in an equally precarious way. The 
creative activity of our thought results in the con- 
stitution or apprehension of certain relations and 
distinctions. Hence it is only logical when Green 
treats a thing as a mere sum of relations. 1 But that 
is preposterous. Assuredly a thing is nothing apart 
from its relations, yet as certainly naked relations are 
nothing at all. We must therefore drop the form of 
idealism which affirms that "thought determines 
reality." Or at least we must drop the pretension 
that we from such a position can deduce either the 
existence of nature, or the great principles of what 
Hegel calls the Philosophy of Spirit. We must be 
content with the more modest idealism which affirms 
that knower and known are kindred elements in one 
great sphere of reasonable reality. 

We incline, therefore, to the conclusion stated by Dr. 
Pringle-Pattison and Dr. Baillie, 2 that Hegelianism has 
given us an epistemology but not a complete ontology. 
Perhaps the conclusion as these writers conceive it is 
even more trenchant; but we must be on our guard 
against impatient movements of reaction. If it is 
suggested to us that an epistemology can exist without 
implying any ontological conclusions, we must repudiate 
such a view. We cannot hold that epistemology is 
barely the analysis of the consciousness of an individual 
mind face to face with (an anyhow ? alien ?) reality. 
A great deal of metaphysical assumption — which in so 
far as it is mere assumption must be bad metaphysics 

1 Works, ii. p. 190 ; with which compare Mr. M'Taggart's criticism, 
Hegelian Dialectic, p. 62. 

2 If I rightly understand the latter's final conclusions. 



FINAL STATEMENT AND ESTIMATE 287 

— may be smuggled in by the use of such a label as 
" epistemology." We do not withdraw what we have 
already said as to the solid and valuable ontological 
results of Hegelian epistemology — the rationality of the 
real ; its kinship to thought ; and — in some sense — its 
systematic orderliness. But we differ from Hegel in 
denying that this truth is the whole truth, adequate 
to the determination of the universe of being. The 
existence of a world of natural realities in time and 
space we do not think is genuinely deducible, though, 
when it is presented in experience, we can see that it is 
congruous to thought. And — what is still more im- 
portant — the revelation of reality made in the philo- 
sophy of spirit is — to us men at least — something quite 
different from a set of new phases in the consciousness 
of an object. We must be in earnest in establishing a 
distinction between Divine and human consciousness. 
We must make the difficult assertion of the limitation 
of human knowledge and human experience. 

The foundation is probably best laid in the doctrine 
of space and time. We must not, indeed, with Kant, 
condemn them because they are our forms, (psycho- 
logically) necessary to us. Hegel is never more triumph- 
ant than when he insists 1 that phenomena are 
phenomena not only to us but in themselves — or, that 
we can form no conception of natural realities except as 
existing in time and space. On the other hand, Hegel 
(we believe) has failed to deduce or to show the logical 
necessity of a consciousness of time and space; and 
the Kantian antinomies prove that there is a certain 
symbolical element in such consciousness. We know 
reality in them, but do not know it absolutely. To say 
1 Wallace's Logic of Hegel, ed. 1, p. 79. 



288 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

this is not to justify scepticism as to reality, but only 
scepticism as to a philosophy which would explain 
everything. Nor can we rise out of this element of 
partial illusion. Our experience, if not our knowledge, 
is tied to it. In grasping abstract truth, the human 
mind, it may be said, is always rising out of the flux of 
matter into the serenity of the ideal and into the ap- 
prehension of timeless formulae. But the philosopher 
himself lives and dies in that flux ; the most " golden " 
of theorists " must like chimney-sweepers come to dust." 
Be his insight never so profound, his life is lived here 
and now, in this finite medium. 

But this medium of ours does not merely affect the 
quality of sense-knowledge. The study of it already 
brings us face to face with those problems of man's 
higher life which the philosophy of spirit discusses. Is 
it not significant in regard to these, that our life is an 
experience in time — not a mere knowing, but a being, 
under these inexorable sense-conditions ? We cannot 
prove whence these conditions arise, though we may 
hold with high probability that such limitation is in- 
volved in our position as creatures of God or as spiritual 
beings with a nature basis. On the other hand, this 
limitation is redeemed from insignificance by its moral 
and religious possibilities; and these are possibilities 
for experience, not for merely intellectual knowledge. 
Even to Green himself, morality is not simply an 
eternal self-realisation, but a communion with God. 
That experience of communion has its lessons. At the 
lowest, a man can only gravely doubt whether right is 
better than wrong, whether Christ Jesus is a Master 
who ought to be followed. At the lowest, he cannot 
rid himself of the haunting suspicion that it may be so, 



FINAL STATEMENT AND ESTIMATE 289 

According to his choice, his knowledge grows or 
dwindles. To say this is not to affirm intuition or 
immediacy. We are speaking of mediation; only it 
is mediation by life and not by the abstract intellect. 
Such a life assures us that in moral experience we 
are in contact with a reality greater than ourselves, 
most sacred, most helpful. It is unthinkable that 
any intellectual short - cut should make this moral 
experience needless or unmeaning. 

We take our stand, then, midway between the 
scepticism of Mr. Bradley's position and the intellectual 
omniscience of Hegelianism. To Mr. Bradley, the re- 
cognition of imperfection or symbolical elements in 
knowledge is sufficient to condemn the whole of our 
attainments. Men are blind creatures in the presence 
of an Unknown and Unknowable IT. This affirmation 
reveals the same intellectual impatience and arrogance 
which produced the dogmatism of the Hegelian scheme. 
Against it we are not afraid to cite the humble 
witness of the peasants in Silas Maimer : " ' It's the 
will of Them above as a many things should be 
dark to us ; but there's some things as I've never felt i' 
the dark about, and they're mostly what comes i' the 
day's work. . . . That doesn't hinder their being a' 
right . . . for all it's dark to you and me.' ' No ; that 
doesn't hinder . . . I've had light enough to trusten 
by, and ... I think I shall trusten till I die.'" In 
this pathetic and half -grotesque form, the clairvoyant 
genius of George Eliot, wiser than her overstrained and 
overtrained intelligence, has given us the very soul 
of moral wisdom and Christian truth. Beyond our 
doubts we have an experience that stills and reassures 
us, an anchor of the soul that cannot be shaken ; some- 
19 



290 HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM 

thing greater than ourselves bowing down to reveal 
itself to us, and not wholly failing. 

Hegelianism, on the contrary, understands all mys- 
teries. It puts the imperfect phases of human knowledge 
and experience in one series, and claims that in that 
series God, or the Divine reason which is ours, visibly 
attains to fulfilment. Having this absolute gnosis 
at command, Hegelianism is impatient of half lights. 
One of the most lovable of its disciples, we are told, 
" spoke almost with contempt of the various halfway 
houses that have been built between the position of 
Kant and a thoroughgoing idealism, as also of the 
many attempts of modern theologians to evade the 
open field of thought, and to fall back upon some moral 
or aesthetic or religious form of faith which is not to be 
explained or criticised by reason. Above all, he dis- 
trusted the policy of writers who use the weapons of 
Idealism to defend the faith, and then attempt to 
repudiate the aid of Idealism." The former of these 
sentences characterises to a nicety the standpoint of 
this little book; the second is directed to another 
address, and may be answered as best they can by 
those who still strive to unite complete faith in Hegelian 
philosophy with complete faith in orthodox theology. 
In these pages we have looked to Hegelian idealism for 
very limited contributions; and we have correspondingly 
asserted or admitted its truth in a very limited degree. 
Idealists in a sense, we believe that Idealism is the 
effective reply to scepticism ; but, however contemptible 
the position may seem to a higher soaring reason, 
we think that this wisdom gives us the half, not 
the whole. We know a love which passes know- 
ledge. We know it; the sceptics are wrong, and 



FINAL STATEMENT AND ESTIMATE 291 

Idealism may help us to prove that they are wrong. 
But it passes knowledge. The philosophical dogmatists 
are no less in the wrong. The very significance of the 
weary moral discipline of life is that we are learning 
lessons from experience which mere "reason" on its 
" open field" — i.e. clever unspiritual intelligence — cannot 
conceivably master. Knowledge teaches us many 
short-cuts ; but a short-cut which should supersede the 
significance of life has no charm to dazzle us. 

The devotion of Hegelians to their dry and austere 
intellectual wisdom recalls to us Keats' equally intense 
and equally one-sided devotion to his own very different 
spiritual realm. 

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever." 

" Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all 
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to 'know.'" 

When one thinks of this, one thinks also of Arnold's 
comment : " No, it is not all ; but it is true, deeply 
true, and we have deep need to know it." We may 
repeat these words as our reply to the Hegelian 
demand for absolute surrender — to the Hegelian claim 
that what it offers is all we need or can gain : " No, it is 
not all ; but it is true, deeply true, and we have deep 
need to know it." 

The world is a slow learner, but it does every one 
justice in the end. We believe that it will pass some 
such verdict, in a candid or a lenient mood, on the teach- 
ings of Hegel and Hegelianism. 



INDEX 



N.B. — Inverted commas mark verbatim quotations or words used in a 
special technical sense by Hegel or by others. Brackets signify remoter 
references, or references to the same subject in different words. 



Absolute, 1, 22, 23, 188, 195, 

221 «.-, 244, 260, 261, 265. 

" Idealism," 32, 34, 239. 

" Knowledge," 20, 196, 199, 

237, 276. 
" Mind" or "Spirit," 205, 

220, 237. 

philosophy, 34, 161, 239. 

reason, 211. 

" religion," 221, 244, 252-256, 

255 n. 
"Abstraction," 133, 134; compare 

"Concrete." 
Acid defined, 132. 
Adamson, 64, 85. 
A-dvaita, 181. 

"^Esthetic" (in Kant), 49, 155. 
.Esthetics, 20, (60), 77, (216), 218- 

234, 235, 237 n. 
Agnoiology, 88. 
Agnosticism, 10, 11, 21, (24), 42, 

114, 139, 143, 196, 244. 
Alexander, 107. 
All is space, 158. 
All reality is thought. See Nothing 

but thought exists. 
Alps, 78, 81. 
Ambiguities in Hegel, 28, 30, 

121, 191, 195, (259), 278, etc. 
American Hegelianism, 85 n. See 

(Dyde), Harris, Sterrett, Morris. 



Ancient and modern art, 226. 

Angels, 263. 

Annihilation, 145. 

"Anthropology," 189, 191. 

Antigone, 67. 

Antinomies, 50, 54, 137, 187, 286. 

A posteriori, 46 n., 49, 237, 238, 

240, 247, 250, 251, 251 n. 
Appearance and Reality, (21), 110- 

114, 126, 281. 
A priori, 23, 49, 184, 210. 
Architecture, 223, 224, 227, 234. 
Aristotle, 31, 32, 36-38, (50), 249. 
Army, 210. 
Arnold, quoted, 44, 180, 226, 231, 

245, 290. 
Art, arts, 200, 205, 224, 229, 237, 

267. 

immortality, (223), 226. 

religion, 202, 244, (248). 

As regards Protoplasm, 105, (107). 
Asia, 250. 

Aspects, 18, 228, 259. See Phases. 
Association of ideas, 108 n., 185, 

194, 232. 
Atheism, 260. 

Atonement, 243 n., 245, 268-270. 
Aufklarung, 91, 207. 



Babylonia, 247 n. 
Backgrounds, 24. 



293 



294 



INDEX 



Baillie, 127, 195, 199, 286. 

Balfour, 173, 218. 

Ballet of categories, 110. 

Bamberg, 71, 74, 76. 

Baur, 68, 236 n. 

" Be a citizen of a good state, " 215. 

Beauty, 60, 173, 176, 218, etc. 

"Becoming," 145, 281. 

Begrif, 27, 159, 198 n. See Notion. 

Being, 139, 140, 145, 177, 189, 

288. 
Bentham, 205, 206. 
Berkeley, 32. 
Berlin, 77, 79-82, 261. 
Berne, 69. 
"Beyond good and evil," (104), 

212. 
Body,' 223. 
Bosanquet, 26, 114, 125, 147, 218, 

220 225. 
Bradley, 28, 87, 109, 120, 121, 

125, 126, 147, 160, 203, 213, 
280, 282, 283, 289. 

Brahmanism, (247), 255 n. 
Browning, 126. 

quoted, 24, 70, 171, 187, 215, 

229, 252, 276. 
Bryant, 218. 
Buddhism, 247, 255 n. 
Bureaucracy, 209, 210. 

Caird, Dr. E., 12 n., 14, 25 n., 42, 

44, 51, 65, 66, 76, 79, 84, 85, 
86, 86 n., 95-99, 106, 107, 125, 

126, 134, 140, 244 n., 254, 283 n., 
284, 290. 

J., 85, 95, 123, 254, 257, 290. 

Caprice, 216. 

Caricature, 229. 

Carinthia, 66. 

Carlyle, 67, 91, 99, 135, 207, 211. 

Caste, 247, 248. 

Casual. See Contingency. 

Categorical Imperative, 57, (204). 

Categories — (Plato), 36; (Aristotle), 

38 ; (Kant), 50-52 ; (Hegel), 120, 

142, 184, 243, 279. 
Causation, causality, 11, 45, 51, 

132, 133, 162, 186. 
Chemistry, (49), 133, 167, 187. 



China, 247, 250, 255 n. 

Choice, 216. 

Christianity, 14, 69, 86, (92, 96, 

104), 109, (161), 215, 221, 243, 

245, 248, 249, 252, 254-273, 

288. 
Christology, 258, 268. 
Church, 69, 249, 256, 258, 267, 

269. * 

"Civic community," 209, 211, 

217. 
Classical Art, 224, 230, 233. 
Classification, 130, 131. 
Compromise, 228. 
Comte, 91, 126, 192, 207. 
"Conception" of Religion, 254, 

255 n. 
Conceptualism, 131. 
"Concrete," 94, 97, 129; compare 

" Abstraction." 
"Consciousness," 181, 189, 196, 

201. 
Conservatism, (80), 91, (211). 
Constitutionalism, (80), 210. 
Content and form, 133. 
Contingency, 34, 153, 159-162, 

163, (179), (215), 240, 241 n., 267. 
Continuum. See Presentation. 
Contradiction, 17, 22, 24, 25, 28, 

133, 137, 139, 205, 207, (214), 

220. 
Copernicanism, 124, 124 n., (286). 
Copula, 125, 125 w., 148. 
"Corporation," 210, 217. 
Cosmological argument, 244. 
Cosmos, 151. 

"Cosmothetic idealism," 189. 
Cousin, 81. 

(Arts and) Crafts, 227. 
Creation, 262, 268, 285. 
Critical Journal of Philosophy, 

(32w.), 72. 
" Critical" periods, 91. 
Criticism (Kant), 32, 42, 276, 284. 
Critique of Pure Reason, 46-56, 95, 

124, 128, 155, 184. 

Practical , 56-59, 204. 

Judgment, 59-61, 164, 223. 

Crystal, 223. 
Cycle, 162. 



INDEX 



295 



Dance, 227 n, 

Darwin and Hegel, 107, 123, 162 ?i., 

187. 
Darwinism, 106, 172 n. 
Daseyn, 145 n., 262. 
Death, 174 n. 
Deduction, 152-155, 158, 160, 161, 

166, 178, 210, 235, 236, 238, 

273, 286, 287. 
"Definite religion," 254, 254%. 
"Degrees of reality," 111, 281, 

282. 
Descartes, 31, 38, 54. 
Design Argument, 245. 
Development from Kant to Hegel, 

42, 108 n., 116, 194. 
de Wette, 81. 
Dialectic— (Plato), 35 ; (Kant), 52 ; 

(Hegel), 26, 121, 122, 124, 125, 

135, 139, 151, 156, 199, 212, 
213, 240, 242 n., 261, 276, 277, 
280. 

Diana Merrion, 230. 

Dictionaries, 31 n., 63, 89 n., (141). 

"Die to live," 213. 

"Difference," 133, 149, 213. 

"Divine Syndicate," 261. 

"Dogmatism," 42, (49). 

Dorothea Brooke, 230. 

Douglas, 126. 

Dryden, 237. 

Dualism, 4, 34, 37, 38, 55, 57, 62, 

136, 153, 161, 189, 245, 249. 
" Dutv for duty's sake," 208. 
Dyde,"82, 203. 

Eastern Civilisations, etc., 247, 

249, 250, 253. 
Economics, 207, 210, (217). 
"Edifying," 5, 92. 
Education, 207, 209, (272). 
Egypt, 247 n., 248, 255 n. 
"Either— or," 28. 
Electricity, 152. 
"Elements," 152. 
Embryology of religion, 244, 256. 
" Empirical physics," 153. 
" psychology," 183, etc., 192, 

etc. 
Empiricism, 13, 185, 205, 232. 



Encyclopedia, 20, 78, 81, 184. 

Epic of Hades, 10. 

Epistemologv, 88, 89, 89 n. } 102, 

117, 184, 286. 
Erdmann, 41. 

Essayist merits, 26, 191, 220. 
Essays hi Philosophical Criticism, 

114, 116, (162 n.), 183, 194. 
"Esse is inteUigi," 283. 
"Essence," 90, 139, 140, 142, 190. 
Ethical Studies, 87 n., 109, 203, 

208 n. 
Ethics, 20, 203-217, 221 n. 
Etymology, 142. 
Evil, 122, 213, 262, 264. 
Evolution, 19, 60, 106, 168-174, 

186, 191, 192, 206, 231, 233, 

235, 242, 246, 252, 254, 257, 

276, 277. 
Excluded middle, 133. 
Experience, 110, 111, 277, 288, 289. 
Expressiveness, 223, 227. 

Fact, 257, 266. 

Factory Acts, 210. 

Fairbairn, 254. 

Fairbrother, 8Q n. } 100, 102, 105, 
118. 

Fairies, 178. 

Fall of Man, 262, 268. 

Family, 208, 217. 

Fate, Fatalism, 69, 211. 

Fatherhood of God, 262, 263. 

Feeling, 177, 180. 

Ferrier, 88, 89, 89 n. 

Fetichism, 245. 

Fichte, 32, 62-64, 79, 91. 

Final cause, 12, 60, 61, 219. 

Finite, 23, 213, 265, 279, 282. 

Finite as the function of the In- 
finite, (10), (23), 144, 155. 

"Finite mind," 191. 

" First cause," 49, 198 n., 244. 

" reality," 223. 

Fischer, 65. 

" Flower in the crannied wall," 8, 
12 71., 16, 25, 125ti., 165, 170 n. 

"Force," 189, 201. 

Forgiveness, 270. 

Form and content, 138. 



296 



INDEX 



"Formal" and "real freedom," 

80, 246 n. 
Foundation of Knowledge, (84), 

166 n. 
Frankfort, 69, 71. 
Free Libraries, 210. 
Freewill, Freedom, 14, 57, 70, 102, 

103, 108, 109, 144, 215, 246. 

tt Geist " 82. 
George Eliot,' (230), 289. 
Germans, 180, 249, 253, 272. 
God, 5, 39, 58, 61, 101, 116, 144, 

171, 181, 188, 198 n., 221 n., 222, 

254%., 255, 258-264, 278, 284, 

285. 
Goethe, 73, 75, 81, 163. 
Good, 35, 176, 262. 
Grace, 271. 

Gradation, 15, 277, 279 [Degrees]. 
Gravitation, 167. 
Great men, 246, 247. 
Greek thought, 69, 80, 90, 238, 

(241), 245, 248, 252, 253, 255 n. 
Green, 11, 87, 99-104, 108, 118, 

179, 183, 194, 203, 212, 213, 

259, 283-286, 288. 
"Ground," 134. 

Haldane, 114, 115. 

Half-lights ; half-way houses, 290. 

Hamilton, 8, (24), 31, 50, 137, 189. 

Hamlet, 20, 111. 

Harris, 32n.,93w., 195, 198, 198 n., 

243 71., 264 n., 278, 279 n. 
Hastie, 218. 

"Hebraism and Hellenism," 245. 
Hedonism, 205. 
Hegel cited, 35 n., 43, 136, 138, 163, 

164, 169, 170, 170 n., 186, 207, 

211, 249, 250, 262, 265, 268. 
Hegelianism and Personality, 115, 

124. 
Hegelianism of "the Left," 83, 

280, 282. 
Heidelberg, 77-79. 
Heine, 261. 
Heraclitus, 33, 34. 
Heredity, 186. 
High Church Anglicans, 210. 



"Higher Unity," (25), 28, 152. 
Historic method, 21. 
History, 17, 235-253, 258. 
History of Philosophy, 82, 136, 138, 

(243), 248, 252. 
History (or Science) of Religion, 

245. 
Homer, 225. 
"Homogeneous," 172. 
Horce Subsecivoz, 232 n. 
Howells, 247 n. 
Howitt (Mrs.), quoted, 13. 
Humboldt (W. v.), 209 n. 
Hume, 11, 12, 31, 44, 99. 
Huxley, 162, 261. 
Hypocrisy, 215. 
"Hypothetical," 160. 

Idea, Ideas — (Descartes, Locke, 

etc.), 31 ; (Plato), 33 ; (Kant), 44, 

52, 56; (Hegel), 140, 142, 221, 

223, 265, 267. 
Ideal, 233 n. 
" Ideal of Reason," 61. 
Idealist art, 230. 
idealism, 13, 29, 31, 127, 192, 

206, 214, 224, 290. 
" Imbecility of reason," 24. 
Immediacy, 265, 289.' 
Immediate knowledge, 61 n., 189. 

assertion, 199. 

" religion," 254 n. 

Immortality, 58, 121, (174), 183, 

259, 285 n. 
Impersonality of Absolute, 260, 

261, 279, 282. 
" Impotence of nature," 161. 
Incarnation, 264, 267. 
India, 250. See Brahmanism. 
Individual, 118, 143, 160, 161, 

179, 208. 
Individualism, 209. 
Infinite, 143, 155, 282. 
" Inner nature," (112), 166, (166 n.), 

(282). 
Instrumental music, 227. 
Intellectualism, (4),' 102, 178, 181, 

(196), (227), (243), 247, 272, 273, 

283, (287). 
" Internality," 156. 



INDEX 



297 



Intuitionalism, 13, 61 n., 63 ; 
(Schelling), 185, 188, 203, 204, 
209, 277, 289. 

Jacobi, 62 71., 79. 
Jeffrey, 233. 
Jena, 71-76. 

(battle), 4, 73. 

Jones, 124-125, 126. 
Jowett, 89, 137, 238. 
Judaism, 69, 245, 248, 255 n. 
Judgment, 139, 147. 

Kaleidoscope, 20. 

Kant, 11, 12, 23, 24, 29, 32, 42-62, 
68, 70, 93-104, 124 n., 128, 133, 
137, 155, 166, 185, 204, 206, 
212, 219, 223, 275, 277, 285, 
287. 

Keats, 219, 290. 

Kedney, 218. 

Kenosis, 264. 

Ker, 218. 

Kernel and husk, 272, 273. 

"Kingdom of the Father," (etc.), 
258, 273 n. 

Krug, 161. 

"Laddek." 98, 197, 280. 
Larger Logic, 77, 81, 82, 91, 149. 
"Laws of Thought," 128. 
Leibniz, 43, 82, 133, 134. 
Libertarianism, 14, 102, 103, 108, 

109, 215. 
Liberty of the press, 207. 
Life, 60, 164, 167-174. 
• Limitation of Knowledge, 15, (136), 

(228), 242, 287, etc. 
Locke, 44, 183, 192. 
Logic, 10, 15, 17, 64, 110, 120, 

127-149, 175, 176, 184, 192, 238, 

243, 276, 278, 279. 
Logos, 34, 142. 
Lotze, 60, 112, 124, 126 »., 163, 

166 n., 180, 282. 
Love, 181. 

M'Taggaet, 28, (30), 33,34 n., 119- 
123, 126, 135-140, 146 n., 158, 
159, 177, 238-240, 242, 244%., 



248, 258-262, 264-268, 271-273, 

278, 282, 285 n., 286 n. 
Magic, 245, 253, 254 n. 
Magnet, 9, 10 n., 17. 
Malebranche, 32. 
Mammonism, 231. 
Manifoldness, 242. 
Mansel, 57. 

Marriage, 76, 207, 217. 
Martineau, 186. 
Materialism, 60, 164, 165, 232. 
Mauvais r pas, 155, 158. 
Max Miiller, 83. 
Mechanics, 164, 174. 
Mechanism, 12, 16, 163, 165, 216, 

220. 
Mellone, 16. 
Meredith, (230). 
Metamorphosis, 169, 170. 
Metaphysics, 138, 163, 194, 196, 

241, 242 ; compare Ontology. 
Michelet, 150-153, 236 n., 237 n. 
Middle Ages, 249, 252, 253. 

Mill, 9, 126' (131), 132, 133, 148, 
162, 163, 169, 205. 

Mind and matter, 38. 

" Mixed Reason," 46 n. 

Modern art, 226. 

Mohammedanism, 244 n., 249. 

Monarchy, 210, 251 n. 

Monism, 3, 34, 161. 

Moral (consciousness and) institu- 
tions, 207, (209), (212), 267. 

Moral Order and Progress, 107. 

Morris, 235, 243 n. 

Music, 225, 234. 

Mystery, 264, 289. 

Napoleon, 4, 73, 75, 75 n., 76, 79, 

247 n. 
Nationality, 251. 
Natural beauty, 77, 222, 223, 227, 

229. 

" realism," 189. 

Naturalism, 14, 193, 195, 211. 
Nature, 140, 150-174, 222, 223, 

235, 236, 244, 269, 286, 287. 
religion, (202), 244, 245, 247, 

254 n. 



298 



INDEX 



Necessary connexion, 26. 
Necessity, 142, 153, 159. 
Negation, negative, 27, 214, 248, 

249, 279, 280. 
Neo-Kantianisin, 86, 87, 87 n. 
Newton, 81, 163. 
Norris of Bemerton, 31 n. 
Not-Being, 36, (89). 
Nothing but thought exists, 30, (138), 

147, (175), (193), 283. 

thinkers , 30, 120, 140, 283. 

"Notion," 10 n., 22, 56,84, 90, 124, 

138, 139, 141, 146, (159), 169, 

171, 190, (198 n.), 210. 
Nuremberg, 76, 77. 

"Objective Spirit," 177, 178, 

206, 236. 
"Observing Reason," 199, 201. 
Oken, 153. 

Ontological argument, 54, 245. 
Ontology, 88, 102, 117, 285, 286 

[Metaphysics], 
Opposites, 22, 25 n., 144, 152. 
Optimism, 14, 83, 84, 211, 247. 
"Organic" periods, 91. 
Organic unity, 70, 146. 
"Organics,""l64, 174. 
Organism, 12, 60. See Life. 
Ormond, 84, 166 n. 
Orthodoxy, 92, 266, 279, 282, 290. 
"Other," 36, 213. 
" Others abide our question," 137. 
"'Ought," 214. 

"Overlap" or "overreach," 40 n. 
"Owl of Minerva," 211. 

Paixting, 225, 234. 

Pantheism, 7, 19 n., 21, 41, 54, 59, 

181, 192. 244, 245, 247, 253, 255, 

260, 271. 
Parmenides, 35. 
Parsimony, 49. 
Peace-at-any-price, (211). 
Peloponnesus, 240, 241. 
Perception, 130. 
"Permanent possibilities," 131. 
Persian religion, 248, 255 n. 
Personality, 179-181, 259-261, 

271. 



Pfleiderer, 236 n. 

Phases, 17, 21, (22), (25), 141, 176, 

(191), (196), 221, (259), 276, (281). 
Phenomena, 287. 
"Phenomenology" as a stage in 

mind, 181, 188, 190, 200. 
Phenomenology of Spirit , 20, 32 n. f 

71, 74, 75, 82, 83, 97, 98 n., 190, 

192, 195-202, 203, 207 «., 218, 

227 n., 235, 244, 248, 254, 262- 

264, 266, 267, 268-270. 
"Philosopher," 32. 
"Philosophy," 182, 205, 237. 
Philosophy as Criticism of Cate- 
gories, 115, 116, 120, 162 n. 
Philosophy of Art, 218. 

History, (17), 79, 82, 235-253. 

Nature, 10, 15, 56, 60, 64, 82, 

140, 150-174, 175, 235, 236. 
Religion, 82, 85, 235, 243-246, 

247-249, 252, 253, 254, etc., 

258 n., 265, 273 n. 
Right, 69, 81, 82, 203-217, 

236, 237, 250-252. 
Spirit or Mind, 10, 15, 17, 64, 

83, 140, 175-182, 196, 203, 217, 

235, 236, 236 n., 265. 
Philosophy of Spirit, 286, 287. 
' c Philosophy speaking German, " 

78. 
Phrenology, 192. 
Plants, 170 n., 223. 
Plato, 2, 31, 33-36, 89, 209, 267, 

283 n. 
Poetry, 225, 234. 
Polarity, 10, (230). 
Police, 210. 

Politics, 80, 207, 209-211, 246-253. 
Polytheism, 26]. 
Pompeii, 226. 
Poor Law, 210. 
Popular art, 231. 
Postulates, 57-59, 92. 
Prediction, 251. 
Prehistoric history (of religion), 244, 

256. 
"Presentation Continuum," 194. 
Pringle-Pattison (Prof. A. Seth), 

15, 86 n., 88, 108 n., Ill, 114- 

125, 162 n., 194, 279, 286. 



INDEX 



299 



Problems of Biology, 105, 107. 
Process, 281. 

Progress, 171, 235, 236, 247, 250. 
Prolegomena to Ethics, 99-104, 203. 
Proposition, 134, 191. 
Protectionism, 179. 
Protestantism, 249. 
"Psychogeny," 195. 
Psychology, 108 »., 177, 179, 181- 

195, 236 n. 
"Psychology " (Hegel's usage), 182, 

190. 
Punishment, 285 n. 
"Pure Reason," 46 n. 
Puritanism, 231. 

Quality, -ies, 132, 139, 143, 148, 

152,_ 154, 198. 
Quantification of predicate, 134. 
Quantity, 94, 139, 143, 148, 154. 

Random wokld, 131. 
"Rational Psychology," 53, 183. 
Reaction, 25, 70, 80, 91, (286). 
Real, reality, 2, 7, etc., 118, 141, 

143, 147, 148, 158, 175, 176, 185. 

281, 282, 287. 
"Real is rational," 30, 211, 252, 

271, 285 n., 287. 
Realism, 131. 
Realistic art, (24), 230. 
"Reality rational and righteous," 

30, 33, 138, 239. 
"Reason," 196. 
"Reciprocity," 51, 133, 139, 162, 

242. 
Redemption, 14, 104 [Atonement], 
Reform Bill, 80. 
Reid, 31 n., 62 n. 
Relations, 130, 198, 286 [Qualities]. 
Relativity, 63, 117, 136, 173. 
"Religion," 199, 202. 
Religion, 205, 212, 221, 237, 243- 

253, 254, etc., 285. 
' ' Religion of Spiritual Individual- 
ity," 244, 245, (248), 253. 
"Revealed religion," 182, 243, 256. 
"Revelate" or "revealing religion," 

243 n. 
Revelation, 14, 104 [Naturalism]. 



Reynolds, 130. 

Rights, 207, 208, 212. 

Ritchie, 34 n., 107, 123-124, 162 n., 

169 w., 172 n., 187, 194. 
Ritschl, 61, 87. 
Robert Elsmere, 100 n. 
Romantic Art(s), 224, 225, 230, 

233 n., 234. 
Rome, 245, 248, 253, 255 n. 
Rosenkranz, 65, 80, 81. 
Rousseau, 14 n., 68, 70. 
Royce, 28, 126, 165. 
Ruskin, 227. 
Russia, 250. 

St. Simon, 91. 

Sandeman, 105, 107. 

Saxony, 72-75. 

Scepticism, 61, (188), 189, 218, 219, 
277, 280, 282, 288, 290. 

Schelling, 18, 26, 63, 68, 71, 72, 
74, 150, 153, 164. 

Schleiermacher, 81. 

Scholasticism, 249. 

Schwegler, 66, 68 [Stirling's notes], 
93 n., 9in., 146 n., 237 n. 

Science, 2, 26, 27, 241. 

Scottish Philosophy, 62 n., 194, 
232 n. 

Sculpture, 224, (225), 234. 

Secondary qualities, (174), 231. 

Secret of Hegel, 91-94. 

Secular and sacred, 249. 

Seeley, 66, 247 n. 

Self, 179, 193. 

"Self-activity," 198 n. 

Self-consistency, (28), 128, 129, 204. 

" Self-realisation," 206, (248). 

Senses, 173. 

Sequence, 11. 

Seth. See Pringle-Pattison. 

Shelley, 226. 

Sibree, 235. 

Sin, 257, 271. 

Smith, (14). 

"Snort," 119. 

Social Ethics. See Moral Institu- 
tion. 

Socialism, 209. 
j Society, 208, 209. 



300 



INDEX 



Sociology, 207. 

Socrates, 23, 32. 

Solipsism, 63, 285. 

Sophist, 36, 89, 90 n. 

Sophists, 33. 

Sorley, 91 n., 183, 194. 

"Soul," 181, 191. 

Soul, 44. 183, 216. 

Space, 23, 49, 56, 94, 152, 155-159, 

186-188, 287. 
Spectroscope, 9. 
"Speculative," 23, 23 n., 25, 143, 

170 n. 
Spencer, 106, 168, 169, 172, 210, 

233. 
Spinoza, 18, 39, 40. 
"Spirit" or Mind, 182, 199 {Philo- 
sophy of Spirit]. 
Spirit of the Age, 247. 
Spiritualism, (251). 
Stages. See Phases. 
"State," 210, 212. 
State, 69, 209-212, 256, 267, 285 n. 
States of matter, 152. 
Sterrett, 92 n., 254, 262 n. 
Stevenson, 173. 
Stirling, 75, 88, 91-95, 107, 116, 

125, 146, 156, 207, 237, 246 n. 
"Struggle for existence," 107, 

172 n. 
Studies in Hegelian Cosmology, 

123 ou , 258, etc., 285 n. 
Studies in Hegelian Dialectic, 119- 

123, 159, 177. See M'Taggart. 
Stuttgart, 65, 66, 77. 
Subconscious self, 186, 189. 
" Subjective idealism," 32, 32 m., 63, 

120. 
"Subjective mind," 178, 236 n. 

[Psychology]. 
Subjectivity, 26,(38), 207, 209, 215, 

255. 
Sublimity, 248. 
Substance, 38, 39, 51, 131-133, 

139, 142, 198. 
causality, reciprocity, 11, 12, 

51-53, 162. 
" Substance or subject," 16, 18, 41, 

143, 259. 
"Sufficient reason," 134. 



Supernatural, 14, 104, 285 n. 

Swabia, 66. 

Syllogism, 128, 140. 

Symbolical art, 224, 233 n. 

Symmetry, 223. 

Synthesis— (Kant), 47, 97; (Fichte), 

64, 91; (Hegel), 25, (97), 243 n., 

270. 
Syrian religion, 248, 255 n. 
System, 7-15, 70, 120, 140, 141, 

144, 147, 180, 219, 276, 278, 

287. 

Taylor, 238 n., 280. 
Teleology, 60 [Final cause]. 
Tennyson, quoted, 8, 16, 24, 26, 

80, 92, 125 n., 165, 219, 225, 251. 
Terror, 68, 202. 
Tertullian, quoted, 219. 
Thackeray, 232. 

Theism, 54, 192, 222, 270 [God]. 
"Thinking thing," 179, 192. 
"Things in themselves," 45, 48, 

285. 
Thompson, 134. 
Thought, 8, 20, 29, 219, 220. 
"Thought determines Reality," 

124, 286. 
Thuringia, 73. 
Time, 17, 23, 49, 56, 94, 145, 152, 

155, 159, 185-188, 240, 287. 
Totality, 221. 
To "think" a thing, 123, 139, 

189. 
Transcendentalism, 32, 52, 108, 

118, 125, 166, 218. 
Transforming, transmuting, 111, 

221 n., 242, 272, 277. 
Transitional religions, 245, 248. 
Transitions in Hegel, 136-138, 

156. 
Trinity, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262. 
Triplicity, trichotomy, 38, 39, (64), 

177, 207, 211, 245. 
Tubingen, 67, 68, 77. 

"Understanding," 28, 143, 213. 

Undulations, 167, 174. 

United States, 250. 

Unity, 7, 21, 39-41, 243 n., 255, 256. 



INDEX 



301 



"Unity of Being and Nothing," 
89, 111, 137, 145, 158, (281). 

" God and Man," (69), (256), 

265, 268, 269. 

" Opposites," 23, 144, 156, 

(185), (269). 

Universals, 133, 143 n., 160. 

Universe, 244 [Cosmos ; World]. 

"Unstable homogeneity," 172. 

Utilitarianism, (205), 209. 

"Utility," 248. 

Vaccination, 209. 
Values, 61. 

Vegetable, 170 n., 223 n. 
Volition, 177. 

Vorstellung, 27, 97 n., 154, 159, 188, 
220, (262). 



Wallace, 32 n., 65, 82, 85, 183, 

203, 218. 
War, 210, 211, 251. 
Ward (Mrs. H.), 100 n. 
Water Babies, quoted, 19. 
Waterfalls, 78. 
Watson, 85. 
Wendell Holmes, (165). 
Whitman (Walt), quoted, 14, 263 n. 
Will, 14 [Volition ; Free Will]. 
Wissenschaft, 2. 
Wolf, 43, 53, 183. 
Wordsworth, (99), 222, 223. 
World, 44, 53, 144. 
Worship, 254 n., 255 «., 256. 
Wurttemburg, 66-68, 75. 
Wiirzburg, 74. 



T. and T. Claries Publications. 



THE WORLD'S 

EPOCH-MAKERS 

A Series of Biographical Studies dealing with Prominent Epochs in Theology, 
Philosophy, and the History of Intellectual Development. 

Edited by OLIPHANT SMEATON. 



Each Volume contains on an average 250 pages, and is published at $1.25. 
The Volumes will not appear in strict chronological sequence. 



I. BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM. The First Bursting of the Fetters of 
Ignorance and Superstition. By Arthur Lillie, London. [Ready. 

II. SOCBATES. The Moral Awakening of the Western World. By Bev. 
J. T. Forbes, M.A., Glasgow. [Shortly. 

III. PLATO. By Professor D. G. Bitchie, M.A., University of St. 

Andrews. [Ready. 

IV. MABCUS AUBELIUS AND THE LATEB STOICS. The Last and 

the Greatest Age of Stoicism. By F. W. Bussell, D.D., Vice- 
Principal of Brasenose College, Oxford. [Shortly. 

V. OBIGEN AND GBEEK PATBISTIC THEOLOGY. By Bev. W. 
Fairweather, M.A. [Ready. 

VI. AUGUSTINE AND LATIN PATBISTIC THEOLOGY. By Bev. 
Professor B. B. Warfield, D.D., Princeton. 

VII. MUHAMMAD AND HIS POWEB. By P. De Lacy Johnstone, 

M.A.(Oxon.). [Ready. 

VIII. ANSELM AND HIS WOBK. By Bev. A. C. Welch, B.D. [Ready. 

IX. FBANCIS AND DOMINIC AND THE MENDICANT OBDEBS. 
By Bev. Professor J. Herkless, D.D., University of St. Andrews. 

[Ready. 

X. SCOTUS EBIGENA AND HIS EPOCH. By B. Latta, Ph.D., D.Sc, 

Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Aberdeen. 

XI. WYCLIF AND THE LOLLABDS. By Bev. J. C. Carrick, B.D. 

XII. THE MEDICI AND THE ITALIAN BENAISSANCE. By Oliphant 
Smeaton, M.A., Edinburgh. [Ready. 

[Continued on next page. 



T. and T. Clark's Publications. 



THE WORLD'S EVOCR-MAKERS-eontinued. 

XIII. THE TWO BACONS AND EXPERIMENTAL SCIENCE. Show- 

ing how Roger Bacon prepared the way for Francis Bacon, 
Lord Verulam. By Rev. W. J. Couper, M.A. 

XIV. SAVONAROLA. By Rev. G. M 'Hardy, D.D. [Ready. 

XV. LUTHER AND THE GERMAN REFORMATION. By Rev. 
Principal T. M. Lindsay, D.D., U.F.C. College, Glasgow. 

[Ready. 

XVI. CRANMER AND THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. By A. D. 

Innes, M.A.(Oxon.), London. [Ready. 

XVII. CALVIN AND THE REFORMED THEOLOGY. By Rev. 
Principal Salmond, D.D., U.F.C. College, Aberdeen. 

XVIII. PASCAL AND THE PORT ROYALISTS. By Professor W. 
Clark, LL.D., D.C.L., Trinity College, Toronto. [Ready. 

XIX. DESCARTES, SPINOZA, AND THE NEW PHILOSOPHY. 
By Rev. Professor J. Iverach, D.D., U.F.C. College, Aberdeen. 

XX. WILLIAM HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK. By James Sime, 
M.A., F.R.S.E. [Ready. 

XXI. WESLEY AND METHODISM. By F. J. Snell, M.A.(Oxon.). 

[Ready. 

XXII. LESSING AND THE NEW HUMANISM. Including Baumgarten 
and the Science of ^Esthetics. By Rev. A. P. Davidson, M.A. 

XXIII. HUME AND HIS INFLUENCE ON PHILOSOPHY AND 

THEOLOGY. By Professor J. Orr, D.D., Glasgow. 

XXIV. ROUSSEAU AND NATURALISM IN LIFE AND THOUGHT. 

By Professor W. H. Hudson, M.A., Leland Stanford Junior 
University, California. 

XXV. KANT AND HIS PHILOSOPHICAL REVOLUTION. By Pro- 
fessor R. M. Wenley, D.Sc, Ph.D., University of Michigan. 

XXVI. SCHLEIERMACHER AND THE REJUVENESCENCE OF 
THEOLOGY. By Professor A. Martin, D.D., New College, 
Edinburgh. [Shortly. 

XXVII. HEGEL AND HEGELIANISM. By Professor R. Mackintosh, 
D.D., Lancashire Independent College, Manchester. 

SXVIII. NEWMAN AND HIS INFLUENCE. By C. Sarolea, Ph.D., 
Litt. Doc, University of Edinburgh. 

XXIX. EUCLID AND HIS SYSTEM. By Thomas Smith, D.D., LL.D. 

[Ready. 



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